In this paper different formulae for the decomposition of aggregate productivity levels and changes are applied to a sample of German manufacturing firms that pertain to 11 different industries at a roughly two-digit level observed over the period 1981-1998. Productivity is measured by a...

This paper investigates how the survival of firms over the industry life cycle is affected by different kinds of knowledge, namely post-entry experience, pre-entry experience, and knowledge acquired by innovative activity. Therefore, a statistical survival analysis is performed for the German...

Knowledge is one of the most important determinants in single-industry studies of firm survival over the life cycle. Different kinds of knowledge, namely post-entry experience, pre-entry experience, and knowledge acquired by innovative activity positively influence the survival chances of firms....

Paul Geroski has established two stylized facts with respect to the prevalence of differential changes (mobility) of indicators of economic and technological performance indicators: technological indicators show a larger amount of mobility than do economic indicators. We assess the two stylized...

The paper investigates the relationship between human capital diversity measured in terms of occupational diversity and a firm's likelihood to innovate. The empirical analysis is based on a linked employer-employee panel dataset of German firms over the period 1998 to 2007. Despite notable...

Empirical research has shown tremendous productivity differences, even within narrowly defined industries. A great host of studies is explainsing this productivity disparity by factors such as idiosyncratic technology shocks, input price differences, management skills, or international trade....

We investigate the impact of actors' positions within regional innovator networks on their innovative performance. The networks of four selected regions are based on information on patent applicants and inventors. Count data regressions show positive effects on innovation of both the total...

The issue of poverty traps is assessed using quantile regression. For that an augmentation of the usual convergence regressions by quadratic and cubic terms is used with emphasis on curve fitting rather than parameter estimation. The results show that the generic mechanism leading to poverty...