I theoretically and empirically show that dismissal laws - laws that impose hurdles on firing of employees - spur innovation and thereby economic growth. Theoretically, dismissal laws make it costly for firms to arbitrarily discharge employees. This enables firms to commit to not punish...

This paper focuses on the role of R&D efforts – both domestic and foreign – and human capital investments to the development of national productivity. As technology is also embodied in human capital, the paper empirically investigates the significance of labour mobility as an effective...

R&D-based growth models with human capital accumulation reach a conclusion that long-run growth is unaffected by research activities and government policies and is only driven by preferences and human capital accumulation technology. Zeng (2003) shows that these results only hold when human...

In a recent paper, Bloom et al. (2020) find evidence for a substantial decline in research productivity in the U.S. economy during the last 40 years. In this paper, we replicate their findings for China and Germany, using detailed firm-level data spanning three decades. Our results indicate that...