Skilled labor is a key input to the innovation process. A shortage in supply of skilled labor may hence impede … innovation activities, resulting in lower productivity gains. While governments are concerned about these likely negative impacts …, there is only limited empirical evidence whether and to what extent labor shortage affects innovation activities. The paper …

-in-differences design to causally identify the short-run impact of COVID-19 on innovation spending in 2020 and expected innovation spending … substantially reduced innovation expenditure not only in the first year of the pandemic (2020) but also in the two subsequent years …, indicating ’Long–Covid’ effects on innovation. In 2020, innovation expenditure fell by 4.7 % due to the pandemic. In 2022 …