This article investigates how a firm's financial strength affcts its dynamic decision to invest in R&D. We estimate a dynamic model of R&D choice using data for German firms in high-tech manufacturing industries. The model incorporates a measure of the firm's financial strength, derived from its...

In the context of increasing globalization of markets, merger and acquisition activities in the 1990s are said to be driven by reorganization processes with respect to concentration on firms’ core competencies in order to increase or maintain market power in international markets. This paper...

Technological change is often hypothesized as one of the main drivers of merger activities. This paper analyzes the role of technology in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) at the firm level. Based on a newly created data set that combines financial information and patent data for public firms in...

This paper investigates the motive of pre-empting technology competition through mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Exploiting the patent application procedure at the European Patent Office we introduce a new measure for the possibility to create entry barriers in technology markets. Our results...

Inventors often experience a low productivity after their company has been subject to a merger or acquisition (M&As). It is of central managerial interest to identify factors facilitating the integration of new inventive staff and thereby counteracting innovation declines after M&As. This paper...

This study examines changes in block ownership for a large sample of listed and non-listed German firms. The frequency of block trading is similar to other countries, and the vast majority of block trades leads to changes in ultimate ownership (control transfers). Such changes are more likely...

In this paper, we analyse whether bank owners or bank managers were the driving force behind the risks incurred in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007/2008. We show that owner controlled banks had higher profits in the years before the crisis, and incurred larger losses and were more likely...