This research argues that variations in the interplay between cultural assimilation and cultural diffusion have played a significant role in giving rise to differential patterns of economic development across the globe. Societies that were geographically less vulnerable to cultural diffusion...

We estimate the determinants of various types of product innovation. Knowledge spillovers from rivals have a positive impact on incremental innovations. This impact is largely independent of the participation in R&D cooperations. Spillovers exert no such independent influence on drastic...

We investigate the effect of profit-sharing on product and process innovation. Profit-sharing is a credible commitment of the companies to let the employees participate in any efficiency gain. Resistance against technical progress becomes less plausible. Moreover, employees are stimulated to...

Our study shows empirically that the choice of resource allocation strategy affects innovation performance. A policy of allocating resources to a broader range of innovation projects increases sales of new products, especially if these are truly novel, i.e. new to the market. The effect of...

Using a German employer-employee matched panel data set this paper examines the effects of High Performance Workplace Systems (HPWSs) on labor productivity (defined as sales per worker) and labor efficiency (defined as the inverse of unit labor costs). The estimation results indicate that simple...

Using individual data from the European Survey on Working Conditions (ESWC) covering all EU member states, this study aimed at contributing to our understanding of the effects of High Performance Workplace Organizations (HPWOs) on worker's job satisfaction. The estimation results show that a...

Cartel detection is usually viewed as a key task of either competition authorities or compliance officials in firms with an elevated risk of cartelization. We argue that customers of hard core cartels can have both incentives and possibilities to detect such agreements on their own initiative...

In the early 1990's, the Argentine government promoted a framework for productivity-based negotiations between firms and unions at low levels of organization. The policy weakened the industry-wide collective bargaining system, which sets working conditions for all firms in an industry. This...

Although the Industrial Revolution is often characterized as the culmination of a process of commercialisation, the precise nature of such a link remains unclear. This paper models and analyzes such link: the role of commercialisation in raising efficiency wages as impersonal and anonymous...

Open standard-setting organizations (SSOs) have emerged as important coordination and diffusion mechanism for information and communication technologies. Open standards are developed non-discriminatorily and licensed to anybody at reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Little is known about...