Over the last few years, worldwide mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have increasedsharply both in terms of value and volume. This development has not only beendriven by corporate acquirers but also to an increasing extent by private equityinvestors. In this paper, we analyze differences in...

China ist aus eigener Forschungskraft ('Make') auf dem Weg in die Weltspitze der technologischen Innovatoren und bereits heute einer der wichtigsten Konkurrenten für Deutschland. In einzelnen Technologiebereichen (z.B. Kfz) besteht sogar die akute Gefahr eines Leapfroggings. Daneben erwirbt...

This paper reviews the literature on the economics of intellectual property rights (IPR), with a particular focus on the main industrial property rights of patents and trade marks. Intellectual property rights arise from the legal protection accorded to certain inventions or creations. We begin...

Patent trolls appropriate profits from innovation solely by enforcing patents against infringers.They are often characterized as relying on low-quality patents, an assessment that, if correct,would imply that eradicating such patents would effectively terminate the troll business. Inthis paper,...

The primary focus of this paper is the impact of knowledge creation and innovative activity onnon-farm employment growth. Non-farm employment growth is modeled in a stylized modelwhere new knowledge and local economic externalities are key factors driving technologygrowth. For our empirical...

The Patentatlas by Greif and Schmiedl (2002) represents an important source for patent data in Germany. Its use for industry-specific studies is however problematic because the correct assignment of patent data classified by technological fields to commonly used industry classifications is...

This paper discusses the impact of a firm's technology portfolio on its market value. Two concepts are used to characterize a firm's portfolio: the number of technological fields and the degree of relatedness within the portfolio characterized by the amount of joint occurrences of patents in...