The effectiveness of Science and Technology Parks (STPs) as instruments of innovation policy has generated thriving debate among academics, practitioners and policy makers. However, research mostly does not consider STPs’ heterogeneity. The present paper analyses the influence of different STP...

The study of the relationships between innovation and the competitiveness of industries is an important topic for both, academic research and economic policy. The huge economics literature flourished in the last couple of decades on the subject broadly falls into two distinct research...

The decision to exit is examined for a cohort of over 12,000 plants established in 1976. Using a longitudinal data base, the performance of the establishments is analysed over the subsequent 10 years. The empirical evidence suggests that start-up size, ownership status, and the industry...

Are new versions of products necessarily better? We analyze product innovation by a firm that engages in research and development designed to improve an existing product, the outcome of which is uncertain. If the firm adopts the innovation its modified product appears to consumers as new and...

Licensing can be a solution for hold-up in patent thickets. In this paper we study whether licensing is an effective solution for hold-up. To do this we distinguish between ex ante and ex post licensing. A theoretical model shows that firms’ expectations of blocking in a patent thicket...

The article argues that IT continues to have strategic relevance for companies because it enables innovation. A conceptual link between the adoption of IT and innovation is established. This conceptual link allows a market-based, economic explanation for variations in IT payoffs among firms: The...

Germany has had an extremely low growth performance since 1995. The paper looks at the long-run reasons for this loss of economic dynamics besides German unification: These include leaving labor idle, a declining share of investment in GDP, a weaker innovative activity, an ineffective system for...

This paper studies the question of whether and how an employee innovator should commercialize an innovation, when doing so within the firm is less costly than pursuing an outside venture, but risks expropriation by the firm. We show that a weaker chance of expropriation, interpreted as the...

On the basis of a modification of K. Lancaster's characteristics approach and a special class of non-homothetic utility functions individual demand functions are derived. Individual demand is determined in a complex way by the income as well as the product qualities and the unit costs of the...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a series of articles on the linksbetween innovation, the evolution of industry and employment. These relationsprovide the building blocks of a new industrial policy. The articles areincluded in Innovation, Industry Evolution and Employment published by...