The EU must embrace international cooperation and collaboration in technology-driven industries to ensure competitiveness and global relevance, while also considering the drawbacks of isolationist policies. The EU's commitment to open markets and global cooperation has historically been its...

The Belgian pharmaceutical sector has been accorded a leading role in the attainment of the R&D investment targets which the EU Member States set themselves as part of the Lisbon strategy. To gain a better insight into that sector’s research activities, the NBB conducted an ad hoc survey in...

Die moderne Biotechnologie ist eine wissensintensive Querschnitts technologie und hat große Wachstumspotentiale. Derzeit weist die Anwendung der Biotechnologie in der Pharmazeutischen Industrie und der Medizin (rote Biotechnologie) weltweit die größte Wachstumsdynamik auf. Deutschland ist...

In this paper we examine debates concerned with national models of industrial organisation. One school of thought has argued that distinct national models, or business systems are a prevelent and enduring paradigm. Critiques of such an approach argue that common global competitive pressures will...

We use household panel data to explore the wage returns associated with training incidence and intensity (duration) for British employees. We find these returns differ depending on the nature of the training; who funds the training; the skill levels of the recipient (white or blue collar); the...

Das englische National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) wird in der bundesdeutschen Diskussion um die Reform der Institutionen zur Konkretisierung des Leistungskatalogs in der GKV entweder als Vorbild oder als abschreckendes Beispiel genannt. Die Analyse der von NICE angewandten...

Background: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common cause of respiratory infection that is highly prevalent in infants. Severe cases of RSV infection require hospitalisation; this is most likely to occur in infant populations at high risk. The study assesses the cost-effectiveness of...

The issue of whether employees who work more hours than they want to suffer adverse health consequences is important not only at the individual level but also for governmental formation of work time policy. Our study investigates this question by analyzing the impact of the discrepancy between...

Microeconomic theory predicts that under certain regularity conditions higher idiosyncratic risk increases the propensity to insure against independent marketable risks. We apply these predictions to the specific case of labor income risk and car insurance using data from the UK. The main...