Obtaining indicators on innovation activities of firms has been a challenge in economic research for a long time. The most frequently used indicators - R&D expenditure and patents - provide an incomplete picture as they represent inputs and throughputs in the innovation process. Output...

Education systems can be viewed as complex systems, by considering that learning, teaching, cognition and education are phenomena resulting from interactions between the heterogeneous agents that compose such systems. Given the complex nature of education systems, new approaches seem relevant,...

The paper reviews the evidence on the challenges of digitalization for direct (corporate profit) and indirect (consumption) taxation. Based on both anecdotal and empirical evidence, we evaluate ongoing developments at the OECD and European Union level and argue that there is no justification for...

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a Digital Layer to empirically investigate inter-firm relations at any geographical scale of analysis. The Digital Layer is created from large-scale, structured web scraping of firm websites, their textual content and the hyperlinks among them. Using...

Innovation is considered as a main driver of economic growth. Promoting the development of innovation through STI (science, technology and innovation) policies requires accurate indicators of innovation. Traditional indicators often lack coverage, granularity as well as timeliness and involve...

Until today, the question of how digitalisation and, in particular, individual digital technologies affect productivity is still the subject of controversial debate. Using administrative firm-level data provided by the Dutch and the German statistical offices, we investigate the economic...

Due to the omnipresence of digital technologies in the economy, measuring firm digitalisation is of high importance. However, current indicators show several shortcomings, e.g., they lack timeliness and regional granularity. In this study, we show that advances in text mining and comprehensive...

Big Data (BD) is becoming widely available and manageable. This raises the question of whether Big Data Analytics (BDA) in companies leads to better decision-making andhence performance. Based on a large, representative set of start-ups in Germany, we study the adoption of BDA among small and...