Building on the notion of general and specific human capital proposed by Becker (1962), the paper highlights the importance of employee training practices undertaken in firms as an important tool for human resource and knowledge management and focuses on the role of works councils as a specific...

This paper analyzes whether firms conducting internal R&D and acquiring external high-tech equipment experience a complementarity effect. For German CIS data we conduct a complete set of indirect and direct complementarity tests refining the analysis by looking at various types of innovations...

The relationship between innovation and firm survival is analyzed for the population of German laser source producers from the beginning of the industry until 2005. Innovation effort is approximated by the generation of high quality patents in laser sources technology (IPC H01S) and by having...

Analysing the relationship between firms' openness to external knowledge and their innovation performance is nothing new. What is new is studying how this relationship fares in latecomer economic contexts such as Nigeria, and that is the focus of this paper. Using unique micro-level innovation...

In this paper, we address spin-off ventures from research centres. Based on an analysis of existing empirical studies on spin-offs we identify major groups of success factors. Empirical evidence shows a notable lack of studies which refer to the technology transfer process, especially the...

While modern theorising on the microfoundation of macroeconomics makes intense use of the representative firm notion, severe objections have been raised. Regarded from the history of thought this is the second time that its usefulness is called into question. The paper presents an old literature...

In this study we investigate the factors that shape the attitudes of scientists toward starting their own business or working in a private sector firm. The analysis is based on data collected from scientists working in the German Max Planck Society, a research institution devoted to basic...

An essential feature of Schumpeter’s business cycle theory is the attempt to explain the macrodynamics of an economy by means of innovative heterogeneous agents. It has been criticized for being theoretically inconsistent as well as for its lack of empirical confirmation. In particular, the...

This study explores the impact of social capital on innovation by constructing a more general measure of social capital indicator consisting of generalized and institutional trust, associational activities and civic norms. We test the hypothesis that social capital has a positive impact on...

The purpose of this paper is to test the possible catalysing role of in-house R+D in fostering the complementarity of innovative inputs on a sample of 3045 manufacturing firms drawn from the third Italian Community Innovation Survey (1998-2000). The interactions between four different sources of...