R&D expenditures of firms varies vastly between and within industries. In recent years a lot of theoretical and empirical studies attempted to explain the distribution of R&D expenditures. Four main factors repeatedly appeared in this literature: Firm size, market power, appropriability and...

New firm set ups, especially in High Tech industries, can give important impulses for the technological development and the catch up process in the Neuen Bundes1aender. The paper at hand gives an overview about the formation behaviour considering the preconditions of the former German Democratic...

Established theories in international business come to different conclusions when specifically applied to the analysis of the international activities of start-up companies in high-technology industries. Using a new dataset of 495 British and German start-ups operating in high-technology...

The Importance and Contribution of new technology-based Firms (NTBFs) to long term economic development is at the center of a controversial debate. This paper provides an overview of the current status of research on various issues concerning NTBFs in Germany. The issues covered include the...

This paper deals with the innovation behavior and the R&D activities at the firm level in East Germany. The theoretical and empirical analyses lead to the conclusion that the relatively low level of the R&D intensity in East Germany is a reflex of the relatively weak economy, especially the...

In the paper we analyze the convergence process of the West German Laender from 1970 to 1995 using descriptive tools as well as panel estimation methods. Although there have been some winners in this process, the main finding is that convergence was insufficient in the sense that no gains have...