This paper assesses the effectiveness of vertical industrial policies within the EU. Vertical industrial policy is defined as government support for specific firms or industries (picking winners or supporting losers) and measured by state aid granted by Member States to the manufacturing...

Using a large firm level dataset, that covers 18 European countries in the 2006-2014 period, I develop an empirical approach in the spirit of Rajan and Zingales (1998) in order to study whether and to what extent the credit cycle influences the efficient allocation of resources across firms. I...

Can policymakers improve macroeconomic performance by encouraging the entry of high-performance startups? To answer this question, we construct a novel and comprehensive data set on 1.3 million startups in ten European countries. We apply cluster analysis to identify distinct startup types and...

How much can policymakers improve macroeconomic outcomes by encouraging the entry of high-performance startups? We construct a novel and comprehensive data set on almost 1,5 million startup firms in ten European countries. We then apply cluster analysis to identify distinct startup types and...

Can policymakers improve macroeconomic performance by encouraging the entry of high‑performance start‑ups? To answer this question, we construct a novel and comprehensive data set on 1.3 million start‑ups in 10 European countries. We apply cluster analysis to identify distinct start‑up...

The EU has experienced different options to support the emergence of champions: (i) targeted support for strategic sectors and large technology initiatives (e.g. Airbus, Ariane, HDTV and ESPRIT); (ii) a support of declining sectors with the ECSC Treaty; and (iii) an emphasis on horizontal...

Our main objective with this paper is to propose a scoreboard useful to assess clusters' competitiveness in a knowledge-based economy. Our scoreboard is grounded on the concept of ecology of value. This concept highlights that the competitiveness of a network of small and medium enterprises...

Government had an enormous impact on economic growth and development in pre-industrial Europe. Mostly, this was unintended - a side effect, for example, of government exaction or of the waging of war. However, governments did also intervene in their economies deliberately. These interventions...

Financial constraints can severely limit the development of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and are very likely to affect innovative firms. In order to lower the barriers to firm growth, in 2014 the European Commission introduced the SME Instrument with the specific aim to support...

The first target of today's global commercial and military espionage, trade secrets, are the only form of intellectual property protection to be based on the necessity of nondisclosure and secrecy rather than on the paradigm of publicity and exploitability, with the obvious consequence that...