Business Portfolio Planning techniques often suggest that firms should invest in industries with high profitability, high growth, or other attractive characteristics. Critiquing this view, we suggest that the same factors which lead to high profitability in an industry may cause its inefficient...

The literature on international trade and firm performance grows exponentially. This paper attempts to summarize what we learn from this literature to guide both future empirical and theoretical work in this area, and public debates and policy makers, in an evidence-based way. The focus is on...

Do chief executive officers (CEOs) really matter? Do cross-sectional differences in firm performance and CEO pay reflect differences in CEO ability? Examining CEO departures over 1992-2002, we first find that the stock price reaction upon departure is negatively related to the firm's prior...

The overall objective of this paper was to determine the impact of producing a world-first innovation, a Canada-first innovation and a first-to-the firm innovation on firms' economic performance (employment, labour productivity, market share and total value added). The study used unique data...

There is an emerging debate in the scholarly literature regarding the extent to which academic human capital contributes to firm performance. This debate centers on the nature of an academic scientist's human capital and its institutional specificity. Using data on the human capital of...

We identify and compare firms that promote a single executive (successor-incentive) and companies that conduct tournaments (tournament-incentive) among inside managers to succeed the CEO. Successor-incentive firms give more pay-for-performance compensation to the designated successor, are more...

Most evidence regarding the determinants and effects of corporate governance practices is based on large firms. Herein, we explore these issues in the context of small publicly traded Canadian companies. We exploit the fact that such firms were not subject to corporate governance guidelines...

Core competencies are firm characteristics that allow them to be in a better position than its competitors. Based on the resources based view theory is usual to consider that these competencies are formed from internal and external factors of business, combined by the strategy. This paper...

We present a game-theoretical model of privatization in transition economies. We consider the costs and benefits of government ownership and derive the net effect of government ownership on firm performance. Model predictions are consistent with empirical evidence in the literature.