This paper investigates the factors that explain the level and dynamics of manufacturing firm productive efficiency. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique sample of about 39,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2005. We estimate the...

The traditional approach to measuring allocative efficiency is based on input prices, which are rarely known at the firm level. This paper proposes a new approach to measure allocative efficiency which is based on the output-oriented distance to the frontier in a profit technical efficiency...

A new approach in German innovation policy organizes contests of proposals for developing innovation networks. Based on an overview of the different programs, we investigate the advantages, problems and limitations of such an approach. We find that this type of policy may have a relatively large...

Der Beitrag behandelt den Einfluss des Gründungsgeschehens auf die regionale Entwicklung. Viele dieser Wirkungen sind indirekter Natur und müssen sich nicht notwendig in der Region niederschlagen, in der die Gründung stattfand. Empirische Analysen für westdeutsche Regionen zeigen, dass nur...