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 R & D and focuses, in particular, on the transfer of knowledge. In recent years, the programs have been streamlined and funding...

Many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are unable to finance research and development (R & D) using only their internal resources. However, they have limited access to external financing loans for high-risk R & D projects. Therefore, funding programs initiated by the German government,...

Viele kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) können Forschung und Entwicklung (FuE) nicht allein aus Eigenmitteln finanzieren. Die Fremdfinanzierung risikoreicher FuE-Projekte mit Krediten ist ihnen aber auch nur begrenzt möglich. Die Förderprogramme des Bundes, der Länder und der EU sind...

Die Innovationspolitik des Bundes und der Länder bietet dem Mittelstand ein breites Spektrum an Programmen zur Stärkung von Forschung und Entwicklung der kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen und ist besonders auf den Wissenstransfer ausgerichtet. In den letzten Jahren wurden die Programme...

Based on a unique firm level data set of the German manufacturing sector, this paper provides new empirical evidence regarding the determinants of different types of environmental technological innovations. We examine particularly the effects of environmental organizational measures such as...

The literature on within-firm organizational change and productivity suggests that firms can make more efficient use of certain technologies if complementary forms of organization are adopted. This issue may be of even greater importance for the case of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement...

The European Commission has recently stepped up its promotion of the "Integrated Product Policy". The objective of the IPP is to support the realisation of environmental product innovations and thus to achieve a broad reduction of all environmental impacts throughout a product's life cycle....

Significant policy effort is devoted to stimulate the development, adoption and diffusion of environmentally-friendly technology. Sceptics worry about the effects of regulation-induced environmental technology on firms' competitiveness. Since innovation is a crucial productivity driver, a...

The traditional argument that shorter product cycles favor trade secret over patenting is reviewed. A game theoretic model provides an argument that shorter product cycles can induce firms to file more patent applications. The firms may be trapped in a prisoners' dilemma where all firms would...