The COVID-19 pandemic has affected firms in many economies. Exploiting treatment heterogeneity, we use a difference-in-differences design to causally identify the short-run impact of COVID-19 on innovation spending in 2020 and expected innovation spending in subsequent years. Based on a...

Innovation is crucial to economic development. Innovation expenditures in Germany's business sector as well as public funding for science and research have been increasing in the past decade. However, the share of businesses with innovations - especially among the small- and medium-sized ones -...