The determinants of export behaviour at firm level have been widely investigated for manufacturing companies. By contrast, what has remained largely neglected is a detailed investigation in the service sector. As aggregate statistics show, international trade in services has grown significantly...

Using firm-level panel data from the German cost structure survey over the period 1992 to 2000, our empirical analysis shows that firms that increased material inputs relative to internal labor costs performed better in terms of gross operating surplus than other firms. However, firms that...

It is obvious that the performance of firms hinges upon the dynamics of both industry- and firm-specific factors. A less obvious, and perhaps a more important, line of inquiry is that to the extent that they have a bearing on firm performance, how much do these two groups of factors respectively...

Corporate governance literature argues that board diversity is potentially positively related to firm performance. This study examines the relationship in the case of women in top executive jobs and on boards of directors. We use data for the 2500 largest Danish firms observed during the period...

Ungeachtet der Tatsache, dass unser empirisches Wissen ueber die wirtschaftlichen Folgen rechtlich autorisierter Mitarbeitervertretungen in der juengeren Vergangenheit erheblich zugenommen hat, gibt es nach wie vor noch mindestens zwei „weisse Flecken“ in der Betriebsratsforschung: Zum einen...

This paper analyses data on 490 companies with broad-based stock option plans, matched to data from CompuStat in order to compare their characteristics and performance to that of other public companies. Major findings are that 1) companies with broad-based plans have higher levels of labor...

In this paper we explore corporate real estate ownership internationally. Based on a sample of 4,636 companies from 18 industries and 9 countries we document distinct patterns and trends in the corporate ownership level of real estate. Real estate ownership appears to be driven by industrial...

This research examines the impact of manager turnover on firm performance using information from the Dutch soccer league in the period 1986-2004. The advantage of using sports data is that both manager characteristics and decisions and firm outcomes are directly observable. Both...

Despite its lack of attractiveness to other countries, the German system of quasi-parity codetermination at company level has held up remarkably well. We recount the theoretical arguments for and against codetermination and survey the empirical evidence on the effects of the institution, tracing...