Financing constraints have been discussed as a major obstacle to innovation. Small and mediumsized enterprises and start-ups are particularly concerned by such impediments. Venture capital has emerged as a partial solution in some countries, but is only available for start-up firms with major...

This paper develops a two-industry model of R&D. A monopolist supplier sells an intermediate good to an oligopolistic buyer industry where firms compete in quantity and quality-enhancing R&D. The supplier can contribute to downstream product improvements by creating spillover knowledge which...

This paper uses a new firm panel data set to explore the relationship between R&D and productivity in German manufacturing firms for the period from 1979 to 1989. The results confirm the view that R&D is an important determinant of productivity growth. In the cross-section, the elasticity of...

This paper studies the effect of regional spillovers on the rate of firm formation in two major West German industries for the time period from 1989 to 1993. I exploit regional variations in firm formation at the county level to identify the effects of historically given industry structure and...

Using a newly constructed panel dataset of German enterprises, I estimate R&D and capital investment equations for the time period from 1990 to 1994. Simple accelerator specifications indicate considerable sensitivity of R&D and investment to cash flow for relatively small firms. Much of this...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncer-tainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

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...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...