The literature on skill-biased technological change concentrates on highly skilled and unskilled employees. It is unclear, however, if the employment opportunities of the majority of the labour force in Germany-employees with a degree from the dual apprenticeship system-increase or not. In...

In recent times the service sector is often called the driving force of today?s economies. This paper analyses the innovative activities of German service firms. We investigate whether firms that receive public subsidies for innovation projects engage more in innovative activities than others....

This paper considers the effect of different firm leadership on the innovative performance of firms from seven EU countries. We investigate whether owner-led or manager-led firms achieve a larger share of their turnover with product innovations. Economic theory does not propose clear answers to...

This paper analyzes the link between the diffusion of information- and communication technology (ICT) and both the skill structure and employment expectations of the different skill categories. The analysis is based on cross-sectional data for 4150 German firms conducted in mid-2000. The...

In Deutschland beanspruchen gleich zwei Ressorts, das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) sowie das Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi) die Zuständigkeit für die deutsche Innovationspolitik. Dieses für den Bund offensichtlich bedeutsame Politikfeld...

In dieser Arbeit werden die verschiedenen Anreize für Manager im Vergleich zu Unternehmenseignern untersucht, Innovationen durchzuführen. Bei den Anreizen treten gegenläufige Effekte der Innovationsanstrengungen auf. Unsere Untersuchung über die Determinanten des Innovationserfolges liefert...

In this paper we analyse the effect of R&D co-operation on firms? innovation performance. We investigate the effect of past co-operation on current sales of innovative products, distinguishing between products new to the firm and new to the market, and on cost reductions due to innovative...

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) constitute a disruption to the working environment of the inventive labor force of the acquired company. If inventors would respond with a decline of their patent productivity or departure from the firm this can be detrimental to the innovative process within the...

Determining the research and development (R&D) boundaries of the firm as the choice between internal, collaborative and external technology acquisition has since long been a major challenge for firms to secure a continuous stream of innovative products or processes. While research on R&D...

In this paper, we estimate the effect of different macro and micro variables on thedistribution of unemployment duration in West Germany using censored quantile regressions. We analyze unemployment periods of more than 91,000 observations from the years 1981 to 1997 drawn from the IAB employment...