The design of optimal immigration policy, particularly in the face of the spiralling demand for highly skilled workers, such as IT workers and engineers, is a topical issue in the policy debate as well as the economic literature. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from firm level data...

Firm acquisitions have been shown to serve as a way to gain access to international markets, technological assets, products or other valuable resources of the target firm. Given this heterogeneity of takeover motivations and the skewness of the distribution of the deal value we show whether and...

Gaining access to technological assets and patents, in particular, has long been a major motive and objective for firm acquisitions. On the one hand, patents are used as a building instrument for the acquirer's technology portfolio. On the other hand, patents can be attractive because of their...

Gaining access to technological assets and patents, in particular, has long been a major motive and objective for firm acquisitions. On the one hand, patents are used as a building instrument for the acquirer's technology portfolio. On the other hand, patents can be attractive because of their...

We investigate incidence and evolution of patent thickets. Our empirical analysis is based on a theoretical model of patenting in complex and discrete technologies. The model captures how competition for patent portfolios and complementarity of patents affect patenting incentives. We show that...

This paper studies the relationship between trade credit and innovation. While trade credit is well researched in the finance literature, its link to innovation has been neglected in prior research. We argue that innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are more likely to use trade...

The design of optimal immigration policy, particularly in the face of the spiralling demand for highly skilled workers, such as IT workers and engineers, is a topical issue in the policy debate as well as the economic literature. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from firm level data...

The relationship between industrial policy and merger control is one of the most controversial topics in European competition law. The debate has become particularly intense in recent years given the perceived failure of free markets and the return of government intervention into the economy. In...

The paper assesses the impact of Organizational Capital (OC) on firm performance for a sample of European firms. OC is proxied by capitalizing an income statement item (SGA expenses). A rationale for this methodology is provided. The model is estimated in levels and first differences, and with...