The restructuring process of formerly state-owned enterprises, including dismissal of excess labor, has been slow. Since the recovery of transition economies depends on the restructured sector, a convincing take-off has been delayed. Many arguments have been forwarded to explain the low...

In a model where privatization of inefficient SOE's is performed by allocating shares to different types of agents in society we analyze the conflict between shareholder and stakeholder interests. In particular, some of those that receive shares in a firm that suffers from inefficiency do have a...

An astonishing 33% of all firm-product-destination export spells in Danish data turn out to be isolated single-month one-off export events (observed once in a 49 month window). On average, for an export-active firm, such one-off exports account for 17% of total foreign sales. These patterns...

The marginal costs based representation of firm productivity in the Melitz [Melitz, M.J., 2003. The impact of trade on intra-industry reallocations and aggregate industry productivity. Econometrica 71 (6), 1695-1725] model, predicts positive exporter productivity premia. We show that this...

WTO negotiations deal predominantly with bound - besides applied - tariff rates. But, how can reductions in tariffs ceilings, i.e. tariff rates that no exporter may ever actually be confronted with, generate market access? The answer to this question relates to the effects of tariff bindings on...

This papers sheds light on the puzzling evidence that even though open source software (OSS) is a public good, it is developed for free by highly qualified, young and motivated individuals, and evolves at a rapid pace. We show that once OSS development is understood as the private provision of a...