Empirical research in organizational ecology has mainly focused on analyzing founding and mortality rates using life history data of the organizations. We try to extend this approach in our study in a number of ways. In contrast to most empirical studies in organizational ecology, we chose a...

This dissertation builds on the economic research about M&A and the effects on the merging plants' performance. In particular, the objective of this thesis is to shed some light on questions about causal effects of M&A on plants' performance, taking firm heterogeneity into account. Since there...

This paper indicates that the extent of collective bargaining coverage in an industry may depend on the differences in firms productivity levels within the industry. Less pronounced differences in productivity levels make it easier to design collective wage contracts that are accepted by a wider...

In the European Union (EU), twenty Member States offer public innovation support for private research and development (R&D) activities through either subsidies or a combination of tax cuts and subsidies. Existing studies show ambiguous results regarding the effectiveness of public innovation...

Based on a novel dataset, the "German Management and Organizational Practices" (GMOP) Survey, we calculate establishment specific management scores following Bloom and van Reenen as indicators of management quality. We find substantial heterogeneity in management practices across establishments...

This paper analyzes the relationship between investment in information and communication technologies (ICT), non-ICT-investment, labor productivity and workplace reorganization. Firms are assumed to reorganize workplaces if the productivity gains arising from workplace reorganization exceed the...

Urbanization and localization effects are known to boost the regional economy and its growth potential. The emergence of these effects is due to localized knowledge flows, the closeness to markets, but also due to the diversity of services and industries. All these effects have the potential to...