Empirical research on strategic alliances has focused on the idea that alliance partners are selected on the basis of social capital considerations. In this paper we emphasize instead the role of complementary knowledge stocks (broadly defined) in partner selection, arguing not only that...

In this paper we empirically studied the relationship between network centrality and academic performance among a group of 47 PhD students from UNU-MERIT institute. We conducted an independent email survey and relied on social networks theory as well as standard econometric procedures to analyse...

Using a large and novel data source, we study the structure of R&D collaboration net-works in the first five EU Framework Programmes (FPs). The networks display proper-ties typical for complex networks, including scale-free degree distributions and the small-world property. Structural features...

The primary goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the complex relationship between the positioning of companies in alliance networks and their innovative performance. In particular, we expect that a firm's innovative performance depends partly on its position in specific network...

Network formation is often said to be driven by social capital considerations. A typical pattern observed in the empirical data on strategic alliances is that of small world networks: dense subgroups of firms interconnected by (few) clique-spanning ties. The typical argument is that there is...

We describe the construction of a large and novel data set on R&D collaboration networks in the first five EU Framework Programmes (FPs), examine key features and provide economic interpretations for our findings. The data set is based on publicly available raw data that pre-sents numerous...

In this note we examine whether a position in a technology alliance block is accessible to everyone. It appears that partners are selected on the basis of distinctive attributes they have, which can inhibit outsiders to join these alliance groups. Our findings clearly indicate that alliance...

In this paper, we take inspiration from Thomas Malthus' hypothesis that food shortage and hunger would remain "nature's last most dreadful resource" and that "the power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape...

This short paper on a very big subject deals with a worry - a worry that the present economic crisis is likely to contribute to the already-existing temptations of governmental and private actors alike to behave in a time-inconsistent fashion when responding to the challenge of climate change....

This paper proposes a way of including in official statistics consumers as user innovators who modify or develop products for their own use. The issue addressed is the role of the market in the definition of innovation in the OECD/Eurostat Oslo Manual and the exclusion by the definition of...