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...

This paper examines the evolution of the supermarket industry, from the birth of the chain store concept in the early 1900s to the recent rise of the Wal-Mart supercenter. The central message is that the major themes relevant today (the importance of scale and standardization, technological...

The impact that the retail format has on the level of individual motivation tends to be overlooked in discussions of the determinants of organic consumption, this neglect due to the tendency to model individual and contextual factors separately. Hence, the dominant research paradigm has...

This paper is an empirical test of the hypothesis that the appropriateness of different business strategies is conditional on the firm's distance to the industry frontier. We use data on four 2-digit high-tech manufacturing industries in the US over the period 1972-1999, and apply...

This paper is an empirical test of the hypothesis that the appropriateness of different business strategies is conditional on the firm's distance to the industry frontier. We use data on four 2-digit high-tech manufacturing industries in the US over the period 1972-1999, and apply...