Human capital is observed to be an important contributor to growth but unevenly distributed geographically. While there is consensus on the importance of human capital to economic development, debate takes shape around two central issues. First, there is the question of how best to measure human...

The telecommunications in the 1990s witnessed an enormous worldwide round of Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A). This paper examines the innovation determinants of M&A activity and the consequences of M&A transactions on the technological potential and the innovation performance. We examine the...

The rapid developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) and the increased use of ICT motivate the vision of an evolving digital economy. During the last decade this evolving digital economy has been the pre-eminent driver of structural change and economic growth at both the...

This paper investigates the role of the 30 largest firms in the respective Nordic country and in Estonia over the last decade and for some variables between 1975 to 2006. The analysis confirms that the largest firms play a critically important role for industrial dynamics in the Nordic...

To quickly adapt to technological change and developments, and thus remain competitive, firms increasingly resort to the use of external technology. This paper investigates whether and to what extent the acquisition of external disembodied technology affects the efficiency and productivity in...

Research and Development (R&D) is a key component behind technological development and economic growth; therefore, understanding the drivers of R&D is crucial. An interesting question is the role of technology spillovers, transferred by trade, and their impact on firm R&D. Here we analyze not...

In this paper we point out a gap in the EU 2020 strategy to deliver growth that is smart, through more effective investments in education, research and innovation. The gap in the strategy is that in addition to investing in its own R&D, the EU must take advantage of knowledge created in the rest...

Schumpeterian growth theory has “operationalized” Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction by developing models based on this concept. These models shed light on several aspects of the growth process which could not be properly addressed by alternative theories. In this survey, we focus...

The past couple of decades have seen what amounts to skills revolution in urban and regional economic research. From industrial location theory and Alfred Marshall’s concern for agglomeration to more recent research on high-tech districts and industrial clusters firms and industries has been...

Drawing on the reputation literature and signaling theory, this article builds on work that looks at patents as reputation signals. We build a multi-industry database of patents that expire due to lack of maintenance fee payments and test for a relationship between these patents and the firm’s...