Feenstra and Ma (2008) develop a monopolistic competition model where firms choose their optimal product scope by balancing the profits from a new variety against the costs of “cannibalizing” sales of existing varieties. While more productive firms always have a higher market share, there is...

We examine how foreign ownership of a firm affects the variety of goods that the firm exports and the number of countries it trades with. We construct a simple theoretical model of how foreign ownership may affect these extensive margins of exports and take this model to data from Germany, one...

This article presents the first nonparametric test whether German works councils go hand-in-hand with higher labour productivity or not. It distinguishes between establishments that are covered by collective bargaining or not. Results from a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for first-order stochastic...

Using a large panel data set it is investigated whether works councils act as sand or grease in the operation of German firms. Stochastic production frontier analysis indicates that establishments with and without a works council do not exhibit significant differences in efficiency.

We use newly available representative panel data for manufacturing enterprises in West and East Germany to investigate the link between production-related subsidies and exports. We document that only a small fraction of enterprises is subsidized, and that exports and subsidies are positively...

This paper uses an oligopoly model with heterogeneous firms to examine how an industry adjusts to rising import competition. The model predicts that in the short run the least efficient firms in the industry become inactive, surviving firms face a fall in output, mark-ups and profits, and the...

This study presents the first empirical test with German establishment level data of a hypothesis derived by Helpman et al. (2004) in a model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either through exports or foreign direct investment: only the more productive...