This paper provides the first empirical attempt of linking firms' profits and investment in R&D revisiting Knight's (1921) distinction between uncertainty and risk. Along with the risky profit-maximizing scenario, identifying a second, off-setting, unpredictable bias that leads to heterogeneous...

This paper assesses the contribution of skilled employment and labour market conditions to the ability of attracting knowledge intensive and manufacturing greenfield FDI. We carry out our analysis by controlling for a wide range of labour market features, such as the collective bargaining...

Research and Development (R&D) indicators are used to facilitate international comparisons and as targets for research and innovation policy. An example of such an indicator is R&D intensity. The decomposition of the aggregate corporate R&D intensity is able to explain the differences in R&D...

A basic assumption in the economic literature is the one of diminishing marginal returns to labour. However, theoretical studies on knowledge and labour specialization assume that an increase in the knowledge investment embodied in the human capital of workers raises the marginal product of...

The participation of top R&D players to publicly funded research collaborations is a common yet unexplored phenomenon. If, on the one hand, including top R&D firms creates opportunities for knowledge spillovers and increases the chance for a project to be funded, on the other hand, the uneven...

A structural gravity model is used to quantify the effect of harmonisation of EU food regulations on intra-EU trade during 1990-2001. We construct a database that identifies food products covered by harmonised regulations at a very detailed level. We find, at different levels of aggregation,...