Persistent differences in the level of business ownership across economically developed nations have attracted the attentiion of scientific as well as political debate. Cultural rather than economic influences are assumed to play a decisive role. This paper deals with the influence of cutlural...

This paper presents a harmonized data set over the period 1972-2002, containing two-yearly data on the number of non-agricultural business owners and the size of the labour force for 23 OECD countries, as well as the quotient of these two variables which is called the business ownership rate of...

Administrative burdens are known to be a major business constraint for incumbent SMEs in modern economies. Far less is known about the influence of these burdens on the startup of new firms. The current paper examines to what extent perceived administrative complexity related to starting a new...

This study investigates the relationship between institutional ownership and dividend payout behavior of the firm in Germany. Using a propensity scoring method estimator to control for endogeneity problems, we find evidence that neither institutional ownership nor bank control is statistically...

This paper faces two questions concerning Joint Ventures (JV) agreements. First, we studyhow the partners contribution affect the creation and the profit sharing of a JV when partners'effort is not observable. Then, we see whether such agreements are easier to enforce when thedecision on JV...

We extend the simple model of voluntary public good provision toallow for two or more public goods, and explore the new possibilitiesthat arise in this setting. We show that, when there are many publicgoods, voluntary contrib...

The objective of our study was to evaluate the efficiency of public, private for-profit, and private non-profithospitals in Germany. First, bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to evaluate the efficiencyof a panel (n = 1,046) of public, private for-profit, and private non-profit...

Using a unique bank-level dataset on the Ugandan banking system over theperiod 1999 to 2005, we explore the factors behind consistently high interest rate spreadsand margins. While foreign banks charge lower interest rate spreads, we do not find arobust and economically significant relationship...

While in the US stock-based incentives are commonly used since the 50s of the last century, in Germany they were invented only some ten years ago. Even in 1996 firms faced considerable regulatory difficulties when willing to grant such incentives. In the meantime the legal environment has...

This paper investigates the strategy of private equity investors to take public companiesprivate in blockholder-based economies. Drawing on a unique dataset, we providestrong evidence that private equity investors buy companies in order to mitigatepotential agency problems and hence to improve...