Cartels, managerial incentives, and productive efficiency in German coal mining, 1881-1913

Publication Type  Preprints
Author  Carsten Burhop, Thorsten Lübbers
Year of Publication  2008
Issue  2008/13
Abstract  In this paper, we evaluate the impact of cartelisation and managerial incentives on the productive efficiency of German coal mining corporations. We focus on coal mining in the Ruhr district, Germany’s main mining area. We use stochastic frontier analysis and an unbalanced dynamic panel data set for up to 28 firms for the years 1881-1913 to measure productive efficiency. We show that coal was mined with decreasing returns to scale. Moreover, it turns out that cartelisation did not affect productive efficiency. Controlling for corporate governance variables shows that stronger managerial incentives were significantly correlated with productive efficiency, whereas the debt-equity ratio did not influence it.
Publisher  Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
Place Published  Bonn
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Published in:  Journal of Economic History, vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 501-528, 2009
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Keywords  corporate governance, Germany pre-1913, Economic history, Cartel, Productive efficiency
JEL-Codes  L41, N53, L71