We analyze the duration of the patent examination process at the EuropeanPatent Office (EPO). Our data contain information related to the patent’seconomic and technical relevance, EPO capacity and workload as well as novelcitation measures which are derived from the EPO’s search reports. In...

Kaum eine Fragestellung hat in der Finanzierungsliteratur der vergangenen Jahrzehnte eine sostarke und nachhaltige Beachtung gefunden, wie die der optimalen Kapitalstruktur vonUnternehmen. Der theoretische Literaturzweig ist weitgehend ausgereift und lässt sich imwesentlichen in zwei Lager...

Recent research argues that the management of intangible assets is a key to firms’ longtermsuccess and requires specialized management techniques and a distinctive set ofskills (Rivette & Kline 2000, Standfield 2002, Granstrand 1999). It is further arguedthat the active management of firms’...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecisewording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC)that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited inEurope. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patentlaws with respect to the patentability of...

In this paper the authors explore the incentives that usersmight have to freely reveal their proprietary innovations. They develop agame-theoretic model to explore the effect of these incentives on users´ decisions to reveal or hide their proprietary information.

This paper tests for the importance of cash flow on investment in fixed capital and R&D using firm-level panel data in two countries between 1985 and 1994.

The start-up team plays a key role in venture capitalists’ evaluations of venture proposals. Ourfindings go beyond existing research, first by providing a detailed exploration of VCs’ team evaluationcriteria, and second by investigating the moderator variable of VC experience. Our results...

This paper extends recent research studying biases in venture capitalist’s decision-making. Wecontribute to this literature by analyzing biases arising from similarity between a venture capitalist andmembers of a venture team. We summarize the psychological foundations of such similarity...

Entrepreneurship education ranks highly on policy agendas in Europe and the US, butlittle research is available to assess its impacts. In this context it is of primary importanceto understand whether entrepreneurship education raises intentions to be entrepreneurialgenerally or whether it helps...

This paper analyzes firms’ choices regarding the geographic scope of patentprotection within the European patent system. We develop an econometric modelat the patent level to quantify the impact of office fees and translation costs onfirms’ decision to validate a patent in a particular...