The EU Barcelona target assumes a close causal relationship between corporate R&D, the competitiveness of business firms and the economic performance of industrial countries. Testing this hypothesis, this paper contrasts innovation and production activities in four research-intensive...

This paper assess determinants of productivity gaps between firms in the European transition countries and regions and firms in West Germany. The analysis is conducted at the firm level by use of a unique database constructed by field work. The determinants tested in a simple econometric...

Feenstra and Ma (2008) develop a monopolistic competition model where firms choose their optimal product scope by balancing the profits from a new variety against the costs of cannibalizing sales of existing varieties. While more productive firms always have a higher market share, there is no...

The goal of this paper is to point out the role played by private equity investors (venture-capital companies and corporate investors) in the emergence of a new biotechnology industry in Germany in the second half of the 90?s. This analysis takes into account the different business models and...

The sensitivity of innovation activities with respect to the business cycle is often assumed to be small. In this paper the hypothesis on cyclical dependence of innovation activities is tested for firms in the German manufacturing, and additionally for SMEs. To this end firms? innovation...

Changes in exchange rates have become a prominent issue in Germany and Japan - due to the enormous appreciation of the Deutschmark and the Yen. Conventional wisdom suggests that economic activity will be negatively affected if a currency is going through a phase of appreciation. The paper...

Präferenzen für Gütervielfalt und hieraus resultierende heterogene Preisbildung auf unvollkommenen Gütermärkten werden in empirischen Produktivitätsuntersuchungen bislang nur unzureichend berücksichtigt. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte zur Schließung dieser Forschungslücke beitragen: Er...

Top-down computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are used extensively for analysis of energy and climate policies. Energy-intensive industries are usually represented in top-down economic models as abstract economic production functions, of the constant-elasticity-ofsubstitution (CES)...

Die Europäische Union hat sich verpflichtet, ihre CO2-Emissionen bis 2020 um 20% zu reduzieren. Für dieses Ziel ist die EU-Verordnung zu den Emissionsnormen für neue Personenkraftwagen von besonderer Bedeutung. Sie hat dazu beigetragen, dass die CO2-Emissionen pro Neuwagen in der EU bereits...

Die deutsche Autoindustrie kann auf ein goldenes Jahrzehnt zurückblicken. Zwischen den Jahren 2008 und 2018 erzielten die Unternehmen einen Absatzrekord nach dem anderen. Der Haupttreiber dieser Entwicklung war das starke Wachstum des chinesischen Marktes, von dem die deutschen Hersteller und...