Productivity growth has been slow in many continental European countries over the last few decades, especially in comparison with the United States. It has been argued that lack of product market competition and poor corporate governance are two of the main reasons for this phenomenon. However,...

In this paper the impact of working hours on the gross hourly wage rate of West German women is analyzed. We use a simultaneous wage-hours model which takes into account the participation decision. First, our estimates show that the hourly wage rate is strongly affected by the working hours. In...

Using a Mincer-type wage function, we estimate cohort effects in the returns to education for West German workers born between 1925 and 1974. The main problem to be tackled in the specification is to separately identify cohort, experience, and possibly also age effects in the returns. For women,...

The theoretical discussion concerning the question whether the incumbent or the (potential) entrant invests more into R&D has attracted considerable interest. This paper reports the results of an empirical study on this question using data of about 3500 German firms over the years 1992 to 1995....

This paper analyzes the influence of the structure of collective wage bargaining on direct investment abroad. A wage negotiations model shows that high productive firms benefit from centralized bargaining and invest therefore less abroad than under dezentralized bargaining. An empirical study...

No other area of the German economy has developed so emphatically in the past ten years as has that business-related services. Regardless of its growing overall economic importance, official statistics fail to provide economic researchers and economic policy with current data on the...

This paper derives a three stage Cournot duopoly game for research collaboration, research expenditures and product market competition. The amount of knowledge firms can absorb from other firms is made dependent on their own research efforts, e.g., firms' absorptive capacity is treated as an...

This paper presents an application of the Generalised Error Correction Model (GECM) for heterogeneous factor demands based on the quadratic cost function. Using data for 26 West German manufacturing industries over the period 1976-1995, it turns out that less general specifications such as the...

The economic analysis of corporate governance is en vogue. In addition to a host of theoretical papers, an increasing number of empirical studies analyze how ownership structure, capital structure, the structure of the board and the market for corporate control influence firm performance. This...