News consumers in many authoritarian countries read government-controlled sources even when independent sources are available. We test whether these choices reflect a preference for pro-government coverage versus persistent tastes for specific websites. We exploit textual data from news...

The paper aims at explaining empirically the diffusion of E-commerce based on two largescale sample surveys conducted in the Swiss economy. The paper adds to previous work in two ways: firstly, we estimate separate models for E-selling and E-purchasing, and, secondly, we distinguish between...

We apply different matched-pair methods to evaluate the policy of sustaining the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies by Swiss firms and we compare it in decomposing the selection bias. In this aim we present the evaluation problem, the decomposition of the selection bias and the...

We define annual shareholder meetings as contentious if one or more ballot items are likely to obtain sufficient shareholder votes to induce a firm to implement governance changes. Using a sample of almost 28,000 meetings between 2003 and 2012, we find that abnormal stock returns over the 40-day...

The paper aims at a joint analysis of inter-firm and intra-firm diffusion of technology, taking as an example E-selling and E-purchasing. The analysis is based on an encompassing model of diffusion, drawn from the literature, which is extended by considering technology-specific obstacles and...

The innovation value chain (IVC) divides the innovation process into three separate links or activities: knowledge gathering, knowledge transformation and knowledge exploitation. Here, we report a comparative panel data analysis of the IVC in Ireland and Switzerland. Both economies are small,...

The aim of this paper is twofold: Firstly, we try to identify and characterise different types of strategies firms pursue in performing foreign R&D. Secondly, it is analysed whether the types of R&D strategies we identified in the first part differ in terms of their impact on firm productivity....

This paper analyzes the impact of technological diversity on innovation inputs and success using Swiss firm-level panel data. While we do not find any impact of diversity on R&D intensity, we confirm a positive impact of diversity on patent applications as suggested by the literature. However,...

Aim of this study is to combine micro-aspects of firm behaviour with macro-aspects of business development and identify market conditions (for example, price competition) and firm characteristics (for example, type of R&D partners) that enable a firm to have a procyclical, anti-cyclical or...

We review and condense the body of literature on the economic returns of public R&D on private R&D and find that: (i) private returns to R&D appear to be large and larger than the returns to alternative investments; (ii) private R&D and R&D subsidies are positively correlated and there is no...