knowledge provided by skilled employees and unobserved individual heterogeneity in explaining the persistence of innovation. …This paper investigates whether firms innovate persistently or discontinuously over time using an innovation panel data … set on German manufacturing and service firms for the period 1994–2002. It turns out that innovation behaviour is …

This paper examines how productivity effects of human capital and innovation vary at different points of the …-technology manufacturing, average innovation performance is higher in all industries in Germany and the innovation performance distributions … investing in product innovation in the majority of industries. Frontier firms enjoy the highest returns to pro duct innovation …