Recent policy initiatives in the EU aim at supporting so-called young highly innovative companies (YICs). This article provides empirical evidence from German CIS data on the innovative performances of this specific type of firms, supporting why they matter. We first characterize YICs in the...

We present evidence that banking development plays a key role in technological progress. We focus on manufacturing firms' innovative performance, measured by patent-based metrics, and employ exogenous variations in banking development arising from the staggered deregulation of banking activities...