The paper investigates the reaction of public R&D spending on economic crises. We are interested in two counteracting motives: On the one hand, public R&D spending can be seen as a means to fight the crisis, and governments may decide to increase their R&D budgets. On the other hand, a crisis...

We study the cyclicality of public R&D in 28 OECD countries (1995-2017). While procyclical on average, public R&D reacts asymmetrically over different phases of the business cycle and becomes acyclical during recessions. It is also heterogeneous across countries: Innovation leaders and followers...

Innovation is essential for economic growth, and governments must encourage firms to increase their investments in innovation. Europe is losing ground to its main Asian competitors when it comes to R&D investment, and is barely keeping pace with the U.S. Moreover, the rate of return on...

Europe faces a conundrum. Despite high levels of research investment and leading the market in many industries, disruptive and radical innovation typically does not come from European startups. One of the reasons for this is financial constraints: most innovative European start-ups do not manage...

Among available policy levers to boost innovation, investment in applied research organisations has received little empirical attention. In this paper, we analyse the case of the Fraunhofer Society, the largest public applied research organization in Germany. We analyse whether project...

The aim of this study is to analyse how research and innovation activities, funded by the Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies, Materials, New Production Technologies (NMP) and the Industrial Biotechnology (B) themes in the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7) (together: FP7 NMBP), are...

The aim of this study is to analyse how research and innovation activities, funded by the Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies, Materials, New Production Technologies (NMP) and the Industrial Biotechnology (B) themes in the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7) (together: FP7 NMBP), are...