This paper analyzes the impact of heterogeneous (social) preferences on the weighting and combination of performance measures as well as on a firm’s profitability. We consider rivalry, egoism and altruism as extreme forms within the continuum of possible preferences and show that the principal...

Although labor mobility has been recognized as a key mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge, prior research on inventors has so far hardly discussed the impact of a move on inventive performance. Additionally, existing research has neglected the differences in gains from a move between high...

Based on a survey of the inventors of 9,017 European patented inventions, this paper provides new information about the characteristics of European inventors, the sources of their knowledge, the importance of formal and informal collaborations, the motivations to invent, and the actual use and...

This paper analyzes the causality between inventor productivity and inventor mobility. The results show that the level of education has no influence on inventor productivity. Making use of external sources of knowledge, on the contrary, has a significant effect on productivity. Finally, firm...

Recent events involving major insurance companies and insurance brokerage firms highlight substantial incentive problems in commercial and reinsurance markets where intermediation takes place. We show that in markets with informed as well as uninformed consumers and heterogeneous risk profiles...

This paper looks at markets characterized by the fact that the demand side is insured. In these markets a consumer purchases a good to compensate consequen¬ces of unfavorable events, such as an accident or an illness. Insurance policies in most lines of insurance base indemnity on the...

This paper analyzes firms’ choices regarding the geographic scope of patent protection within the European patent system. We develop an econometric model at the patent level to quantify the impact of office fees and translation costs on firms’ decision to validate a patent in a particular...

Germany is one of few countries in which the monetary compensation for inventors is not only determined by negotiations between employer and employee-inventor, but also by relatively precise legal provisions. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of the German Employees’ Inventions...