This paper reviews approaches used for evaluating the performance of local or regional innovation systems. This evaluation is performed by a benchmarking approach in which a frontier production function can be determined, based on a knowledge production function relating innovation inputs and...

Demographic change will be one of the major challenges for economic policy in the developed world in the next decades. In this article, we analyze the relationship between age structure and the number of startups. We argue that an individual's decision to start a business is determined by his or...

Since the beginning of the transformation of East Germany from a socialist planned economy to a market economy, there has been an ambitious political goal of fostering entrepreneurial activity in that part of the country. One of the most-hoped for results of this undertaking is the anticipated...

If one cluster increases local competitiveness, can politicians, by interlinking clusters, achieve an even better effect at the state level? To answer this question, the paper analyzes the "Cluster Initiative" introduced in 1999 by the Bavarian State Government. The purpose of the initiative was...

This paper investigates the causes of the shortfall in private R+D expenditure of the EU compared to the US. It shows that differences in the structure of the two economies play only a minor role in explaining the R+D gap. Instead, the European R+D shortfall is mainly caused by a negative...

Nowadays, mixed-model assembly lines are applied in a wide range of industries to mass-produce customized products to order, e.g., in automobile industry. An important decision problem in this context receiving a lot of attention from researchers and practitioners is the sequencing problem,...

In spite of extraordinary support programs initiated by the European Union and other national authorities, the percentage of overall freight traffic moved by train is in steady decline. This development is driven by the fact that macro-economic benefits of rail traffic, such as relief of...

Entrepreneurship literature (Parker 2004) has rarely considered spatial location as a micro-determinant of occupational choice, although there are compelling reasons to posit that spatial location influences economic behavior. Using Bayesian semiparametric methodologies and geoadditive...