The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a simple two-task principal-agent model. There is a cost-saving/quality tradeoff in effort provision. The principal faces a dichotomous choice between weak ("make") and strong ("buy") cost-saving incentives for the agent; the dichotomy is due to an...

Young firms are known to grow at a faster rate than incumbents. With administrative firm data from Germany, we show that the higher growth rates indeed translate into upward mobility within the firm size distribution. Young firms are therefore not only able to catch up, but also to grow larger...

The institutional literature suggests that long-term tax incentives are crucial for entrepreneurs, but studies on this topic are hampered by theoretical and empirical problems related to how to define and measure entrepreneurial income. We resolve these problems by drawing on a theoretical...

This paper addresses three simple questions: how should the contribution of HGFs to job creation be measured? how much does this contribution vary across countries? to what extent does the cross-country variation depend on variation in the proportion of HGFs in the business population? The first...

Our explorative study analyses the factors that affect the likelihood of German companies to be a hidden champion. Based on an econometric estimation model with quantitative data from 60 hidden champions and 346 non-hidden champions, we could confirm prior research findings that specific...

In this article, we analyze competition for agricultural land as an important, scarce and immobile input. The cost of cultivating a parcel of land depends strongly on the distance from the farmer to the plot, leading to spatially small land markets. To investigate this issue, we are able to use...

This paper investigates the effects of mergers on the product mix of multiproduct firms. Thus, we open the black box of post-merger efficiency improvements to reveal a new margin of adjustment along the product dimension. We analyze horizontal mergers in a theoretical model where oligopolistic...