This paper examines the link between liquidity constraints and investment behaviour on the one hand, and firm size on the other for a large sample of German firms over the time period 1968-85. The results indicate that smaller firms tend to have investment functions which are more sensitive to...

The purpose of this paper is to link the propensity for innovative activity to cluster spatially to the stage of the industry life cycle. The theory of knowledge spillovers, based on the knowledge production function for innovative activity, suggests that geographic proximity matters most in...

The recent emergence in the industrial organization literature of a wave of studies identifying small firms as being at least as innovative as their larger counterparts poses something of a paradox. Where do small firms get their knowledge generating inputs? The purpose of this paper is to link...

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that a fundamental shift in Europe, along with the other OECD countries, is taking place. This shift is from the managed economy to the entrepreneurial economy. While politicians and policy-makers have made a plea for guidance in the era of...

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on why so many smaller-scale firms which have traditionally been classified as sub-optimal scale firms can exist. We suggest that by pursuing a strategy of compensating factor differentials, that is by remunerating and deploying factors of...

This paper sheds light on the questions, Why does knowledge spill over? and How does knowledge spill over? The answer to these questions lies in the incentives confronting scientists to appropriate the expected value of their knowledge considered in the context of their path-dependent career...

There is a tremendous diversity in the level and time-series pattern of the self-employment rate across countries. After documenting this fact with cross-section and time-series data on industrialized and lesser-developed countries, this paper presents and tests a series of hypotheses concerning...

The decision of how best to appropriate the value of new economic knowledge is reached by individuals within the context of the decision-making process embedded in the principal-agent model and applied to organizations. Because new economic knowledge is not only imperfect but also inherently...

The purpose of this paper is to link the twin horns of the European economic dilemma - unemployment and a loss in international competitiveness - to a lack of innovative activity. In Germany the Innovationskrise (innovation crisis) combines with the Standortkrise (location crisis) and the...