China recently surpassed the USA as the greatest global source of patent applications. However, without internationally comparable measures of patent quality it remains questionable whether China's patent expansion constitutes the rise of a new technological superpower. Our novel quality index...

We develop an index that compares the quality of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications by considering citations generated by International Search Reports (ISRs). In its most restrictive variation, i.e. excluding citations from the home country and self-citations, the ISR index is not...

This study examines the consequences of loan denials for the investment performance of small and medium-sized German enterprises. As a consequence of a loan denial, innovative companies experience a smaller drop in the share of actual to planned investment than non-innovative companies. The...

This paper analyzes how companies of immigrant entrepreneurs in knowledgeintensive industries differ from companies of native entrepreneurs with respect to start-up characteristics, firm survival and innovative performance. I focus on immigrants from the "recruitment countries" of south and...

In the past years Chinese firms increased their spending on R&D substantially and worked on achieving a higher quality level of R&D. We analyze whether different R&D activities show a positive influence on total factor productivity (TFP) for firms of different ownership types and across two time...