This paper develops a theoretical analysis of training regimes as outcomes of a complementarity between organizational and institutional factors that determine firms' and workers' incentives as regards skills. Specifically, the paper proposes that, on the one hand, knowledge embeddedness within...

The relationship between technical progress and price competition is a controversial issue in economics. This paper highlights the fact that investment in technical progress is an authentic type of competition which benefits the consumers rather than the industry. This type of competition exists...

This paper analyses the effects of overconfidence on a coordination problem within a team of two agents and in the presence of effort complementarities. We show that in several settings an overconfidence bias or the mere anticipation of having an overconfident partner might not only help...

We analyze the impact on a firm's profits and optimal wage rates, and on the distribution of workers' earnings, when workers compare their earnings with those of co-workers. We consider a low-productivity worker who receives lower wage earnings than a high-productivity worker. When the...

Cooperation in prisoner's dilemma games can usually be sustained only if the game has an infinite horizon. We analyze to what extent the theoretically crucial distinction of finite vs. infinite-horizon games is reflected in the outcomes of a prisoner's dilemma experiment. We compare three...

Im klassischen Beitrag von Salant, Switzer und Reynolds (1983) wird für symmetrische Unternehmungen gezeigt, daß bei Verfolgung einer Mengenpolitik Fusionen zur Einschränkung des Wettbewerbs nur dann für die beteiligten Unternehmungen lohnend sind, wenn wenigstens 80 % der Unternehmungen an...

We analyze the development of employment in start-up cohorts, which is the direct gross employment effect of the new businesses. The data is for West Germany and covers the 1984- 2002 period. While total employment in the cohorts remains above the initial level in manufacturing, we find a...

Die Gründung eines innovativen Unternehmens stellt eine Form der kommerziellen Verwer-tung von Wissen dar. Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über Ausmaß von Gründungen in wis-sensintensiven bzw. innovativen Branchen und deren Entwicklung. Da die Gründung eines Unternehmens wesentlich durch...

We analyze the effect of industry, region and time on new-business survival rates by means of a multi-dimensional approach. The data relate to West German districts in the 1983-2000 period. The survival chances of start-ups tend to be relatively low in industries characterized by a high minimum...

This paper investigates interregional differences in cooperative behavior of manufacturing establishments in the field of research and development (R&D). The empirical analysis for eleven European regions reveals a number of significant differences between these regions in the propensity to...