The innovation policy of the German government and Länder provides small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a wide range of programs to promote their research and development (R&D) and focuses, in particular, on the transfer of knowledge. In recent years, the programs have been...

Although Greece is showing initial signs of recovering from its 2008 crash, its economy continues to suffer. It has become clear that the economy will not become prosperous only by the given recommendations of the so called Troika, namely by cutting costs and public expenditures, and by making...

Up until now, wind turbines have been designed to generate electricity at the lowest possible total cost, independent of this electricity's market value. With an increasing penetration of wind power in the system, the market value of electricity generated by wind turbines is declining, since...

The costs of renewable energy technologies have fallen sharply. Now the financing costs of new installations are playing an increasing role in the overall cost of Germany's energy transition. This has put the primary focus of support instruments for renewable energy on creating more affordable...

The bulk of Germany's research and development (R&D) activity is concentrated in densely populated areas, urban regions that account for 62 percent of the country's R&D workforce. The regions surrounding Stuttgart, Munich, and Braunschweig have by far the highest R&D intensity-that is, the share...

The strong reliance of the German economy on the industry sector has been a point of criticism for years now. Germany is too strongly focused on export, making it susceptible to crises and fluctuations in demand and exchange rates, the critics allege. A non-critical look at the numbers during...

Nearly 60 percent of globally traded industrial goods are R&D-intensive. Two fifths are goods with very high research intensity (cutting-edge technology), while the remaining three fifths are goods with high research intensity (high-level technology).1 Up until the 1990s, the USA was the global...

The economic gap between eastern and western Germany is still sizeable, even 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In terms of GDP per inhabitant and productivity, eastern Germany has attained nearly three-quarters of western German levels, respectively. Since some years, the catch-up...

The nuclear power industry is faced with profound challenges- not only in Germany, but throughout Europe as well. New nuclear power plants are very expensive to build and even at high carbon prices, nuclear power is not competitive. Nevertheless, the EU reference scenario assumes that within the...