The COVID-19 pandemic has affected firms in all economies worldwide. We investigate the impact of the pandemic on firms’ innovation activities. Employing data from a representative sample of German firms, we find consistently with real options theory that negatively affected firms...

The R&D policy instrument mix concept has become increasingly important for understanding how public R&D support drives firm-level R&D. To-date, empirical studies have conceptualised the instrument mix as a static unit, whereby firms receive multiple policy instruments at one point in time....

Eco-innovations are crucial for the mitigation of climate change effects. It is therefore important to know if the existing climate change regulations and carbon pricing are appropriate and sufficient to trigger such innovations. Besides government measures, the demand for carbon neutral...

Obtaining indicators on innovation activities of firms has been a challenge in economic research for a long time. The most frequently used indicators - R&D expenditure and patents - provide an incomplete picture as they represent inputs and throughputs in the innovation process. Output...

Foreign-owned subsidiaries make significant contributions to national Research and Development (R&D) in many host countries. Policymakers often support subsidiaries through R&D grants and R&D tax credits. A key objective of this funding is to leverage R&D-driven firm performance benefits for the...

In May 2018, a new regulation by the European Commission on data protection came into force, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It requires many firms to update their data protection strategy. It may also complicate different types of data usage, particularly related to data on...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often regarded as the next general-purpose technology with a rapid, penetrating, and far-reaching use over a broad number of industrial sectors. A main feature of new general-purpose technology is to enable new ways of production that may increase productivity. So...

Process innovation is an important part of firms’ innovation activities and supposed to significantly contribute to positive returns from innovation. Measuring process innovation output at the firm level is still in its infancy, however. This paper reports empirical evidence on measures of...

We study the cyclicality of public R&D in 28 OECD countries (1995 – 2017). While procyclical on average, public R&D reacts asymmetrically over different phases of the business cycle and becomes a cyclical during recessions. It is also heterogeneous across countries: Innovation leaders and...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a set of techniques that enable new ways of innovation and allows firms to offer new features of products and services, to improve production, marketing and administration processes, and to introduce new business models. This paper analyses the extent to...