This paper investigates the role intangible capital plays for economic growth in different sectors in Germany. It consists of two major parts. In the first part, we aim at measuring investment in intangibles at the sector level. We shed light on differences across sectors but also compare these...

The paper analyses the theoretical and empirical relationship between employment, skill structure and innovation in East and West German manufacturing firms. The econometric part builds on firm data from the Mannheim Innovation Panel 1993, 1994 and 1995. In the German industrial sector,...

Our research, based on the ZEW-Foundation Panel East, examines whether high-tech start-ups are mainly founded in scientific and infrastructural well suited regions or not. Estimation results on the level of postcode areas confirm the hypothesis that specific human capital, knowledge spillovers...

Searching for external knowledge has frequently been characterized as crucial for firm success. However, little is known about how the direction of search strategies influences innovation performance. In this paper, we argue that firms need to specialize their search strategy and that its...

Searching for externally available knowledge has been characterized as a vital part of the innovation process. The availability of such innovation impulses, however, critically depends on the environment a firm is operating in. Little is known on how institutional infrastructures for innovation...

The shift towards more open and interconnected innovation activities has been a major topic of recent academic and practitioner discussions. Firms have to connect their in-house R&D activities with external partners, such as leading customers or universities, to increase the effectiveness of...

This paper analyses the impact of business process outsourcing (BPO) on firm productivity based on a comprehensive German firm-level panel data set covering manufacturing and service industries. The growing importance of service inputs into the production process is undisputed. Firms...

This paper examines the management practices of German firms with obligations under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) based on six structured in-depth interviews with managers of firms from different industries and based on survey data. The paper sheds light on management and trading...

Using firm-level data from the German manufacturing sector, we estimate a dynamic, structural model of the firm’s decision to invest in R&D and quantify the cost and longrun benefit of this investment. The model incorporates and quantifies linkages between the firm’s R&D investment, product...

This paper investigates price discrimination of German exporters across different foreign markets. We examine the degree of pass-through of exchange rate fluctuations in the pricing of 70 export items. The model is estimated using panel data on export unit values. Parameter estimation relies on...