We study the effects of a field experiment designed to motivate employee ideas, at a large technology company. Employees were encouraged to submit ideas on process and product improvements via an online system. In the experiment, the company randomized 19 account teams into treatment and control...

We extend Lazear’s theory of skills variety and entrepreneurship in three directions. First, we provide a theoretical framework linking new business creation with an entrepreneur’s skill variety. Second, in this model we allow for both generalists and specialists to possess skill variety....

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the <I>Annals of Regional Science</I> (2012). Volume 48, issue 2(SI), pages 501-527.<P> This paper addresses the performance of creative firms from the perspective of complex spatial systems. Based on an extensive high-dimensional database on both the...</p></i>

Innovation and technological change are central to the quest for regional development. In the globally-connected knowledge-driven economy, the relevance of agglomeration forces that rely on proximity continues to increase, paradoxically despite declining real costs of information, communication...

This paper employs firm-level data to analyze the relative importance of firm characteristics and agglomeration externalities in explaining variation in innovation rates across firms. More specifically, we combine micro-data and census data to estimate the probability that a firm will introduce...

This discussion paper resulted in a chapter in (P. Nijkamp, J. Poot, M. Sahin (Eds.)) <I>Migration Impact Assessment: New Horizons</I>, 2012 (KNAW sponsored).<P> The concentration of people with diverse socio-cultural backgrounds in particular geographic areas may boost the creation of new ideas,...</p></i>

This survey reviews the empirical literature on the impact of environmental policy instruments on the rate and direction of technological change. The survey is explicitly focused on the empirical identification of the hypothesis to expect a stronger impact from market-based incentives than from...

In recent decades there have been an enormous number of studies about innovation systems, partly inspired by a great interest among policy makers in search for a solid scientific foundation and professional support to identify appropriate development strategies. Despite different perspectives,...

This discussion paper led to a publication in the <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718710000913">'International Journal of Industrial Organization'</A>, 29(2), 232-41.<P>Taking technological differences between firms as given, we show that the technologically advanced firm has a stronger incentive for technology licensing under a decentralized...</p></a>

Regions vary strongly according to the participation of firms in R&Dactivity.By linking data on R&D activity at thefirm level with GIS based data on economic, and other locationfeatures of zoneswe are able to investigate the impactof local factors on R&D involvement for various types of...