During the last years more and more discussions came up about the contribution of technology-oriented and technology-intensive industries for the economic development and employment. One reason for these contradictory evaluations of technology-intensive industries can be attributed to different...

In this paper, we report results of an ongoing empirical analysis of firm dynamics in East Germany. After discussing specifics of a newly available data set with information on more than 100.000 firms, we analyze patterns of business starts and failures. Furthermore, we present preliminary...

This study investigates the determinants of changes in corporate ownership and firm failure, taking into account different types of sellers and buyers of control blocks. For a large panel of German corporations we find that firms are more likely to fail or to be sold when performance is poor,...

Banks in bad financial shape are more likely to appoint executive directors from the outside than those in good shape. It is, however, not clear whether all of these appointments necessarily lead to the desired turnaround. We analyze the performance effects of new board members with external...