The Panel on Household Finances (PHF) is a new panel survey on household finances and wealth in Germany conducted by the Deutsche Bundesbank. It covers the balance sheets, pension claims, savings, incomes and work histories of households, together with some information on consumption patterns,...

Theoretical considerations suggest that secrecy reduces spillovers almost completely through non-disclosure, while the disclosure requirement of patents generates some spillover and at the same time allows firms to appropriate knowledge. In this paper we empirically analyze whether protection by...

This paper analyzes the determinants of R&D co-operation among German manufacturing firms. Using firm level data from the Third Community Innovation Survey from Germany, we focus on the role of spillovers in explaining R&D cooperation. We also investigate firms' decisions to cooperate with...

In this paper we investigate the factors that lead firms to cooperate with partners from foreign countries on innovation activities. Portuguese and German data from the harmonised Community Innovation Survey (CIS III) allow us to compare innovation cooperation behaviour of private firms in the...

In this empirical paper we analyze the link between homeownership across cohorts and the net wealth distribution. In particular we are interested in the effect of the pattern of ownership across cohorts. Given that wealth accumulates over the life-cycle and that owners are wealthier than...

Information economics has emerged as the primary theoretical lens for framing financing decisions in firm R&D investment. Successful outcomes of R&D projects are either ex-ante impossible to predict or the information is asymmetrically distributed between inventors and investors. As a result,...

Innovation success depends heavily on firm's ability to set priorities and select the most promising options from its project portfolio before the odds of success or failure become visible and reliable. We ask: What does previous innovation experience tell firms about what not to do in the...

In this paper, we analyse the recording behaviour of German consumers in a one week diary on their point-of-sales expenditures. We are particularly interested in the effect of a behavioural experiment, eliciting respondents’ risk preferences, on their recording behaviour. In the experiment,...

Non-technological innovation is an important element of firms' innovation activities that both supplement and complement technological innovation, i.e. the introduction of new products and new processes. We analyse the spread of nontechnological innovation in firms, their relation to...