This paper investigates the causes of the shortfall in private R+D expenditure of the EU compared to the US. It shows that differences in the structure of the two economies play only a minor role in explaining the R+D gap. Instead, the European R+D shortfall is mainly caused by a negative...

Being a "jack-of-all-trades" increases the probability of running an entrepreneurial venture successfully; but what happens to "jack-of-few-trades" who lack sufficient skills? This paper investigates a possible compensation mechanism between balanced skills and cities, and how this compensatory...

This paper investigates the factors that explain the level of technical efficiency of a firm. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique sample of about 35,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2004. We estimate the technical efficiency of the...

This paper investigates the determinants of success in the development of new drugs. In specific, it explores the factors of success in drug development programs at different stages of innovation process. We use economies of scale, scope, R&D competition and technological spillovers as...

This paper aims to investigate the effect of knowledge characteristics on the total factor productivity of firms developing drugs in the pharmaceutical industry. We decompose knowledge into knowledge associated with the technological firm portfolio and knowledge related to R&D projects, which...

There already exists broad literature investigating small and innovative firms in many respects. However, there have been few attempts to assess this group of firms' propensity to patent or its patenting activities. This paper intends to fill that gap. By applying a new approach to account for...

The relationship between innovation and firm survival is analyzed for the population of German laser source producers from the beginning of the industry until 2005. Innovation effort is approximated by the generation of high quality patents in laser sources technology (IPC H01S) and by having...

This paper explores how and why collaboration with different types of partners and the position within a research network can affect firms' innovative performance in terms of product innovations. A detailed empirical analysis is carried out in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. This...