The importance of innovation for the economic performance of industrialized countries has been largely stressed recently by the theoretical and empirical literature. Very few studies have carefully considered the determinants of European innovation, the productivity of its R&D and the existence...

Using detailed data on biotechnology in Japan, we find that identifiable collaborations" between particular university star scientists and firms have a large positive impact on firms'" research productivity, increasing the average firm's biotech patents by 34 percent development by 27 percent,...