World Pensions Council cofounders Vincent Bazi and M. Nicolas J. Firzli analyse the rise of natural gas as a new asset class for pension and sovereign fund stakeholders in light of the geo-institutional dynamics underpinning asset allocation and investment decisions in an era of macroeconomic...

We study the innovation effects of the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (AFMP), signed by Switzerland and the EU in 1999. Using geocoded patent data, complemented by matched inventor-immigrant-census records, we identify a large number of cross-border inventors (CBIs), commuters from...

This paper explores the possible job creation effect of innovation activity. We analyze a unique panel dataset covering almost 20,000 patenting firms from Europe over the period 2003-2012. The main outcome from the proposed GMM-SYS estimations is the labour-friendly nature of innovation, which...

Heritage institutions house cultural and research content, which is the key source to stimulate innovation. Despite the potential, heritage collections are mostly inaccessible via digital mediums. We analyze the macro, meso and micro conditions of heritage organizations across Europe to identify...

In this paper we investigate empirically, first, the characteristics of the firms that reduced their ICT investment due to the 2008 crisis, particularly the firms' ICT-related characteristics in terms of ICT budget, skills and applications used. The analysis of the ICT characteristics that may...

This paper analyses the role of patent-filing fees requested by the member states of the European Patent Convention (EPC). We provide first empirical evidence showing that the fee elasticity of the demand for priority applications is negative and significant. Given the strong variation in...

This paper considers the impact of European telecom regulation on the value of affected companies. Employing a repeating AR-GARCH model, I compare the effect of three types of regulation which are categorized based on the addressed subject, i.e. cross-market, country-specific and...

Firms that lie far behind the technological frontier have the most to gain from imitating the technology or management practices of others. That some firms converge relatively slowly to the productivity frontier suggests the existence of factors that cause them to underinvest in their...

This paper examines how foreign-owned and domestically owned firms transform innovation into employment growth. The empirical analysis, based on the model of Harrison, Jaumandreu, Mairesse and Peters (2008) and CIS data for 16 countries, reveals important differences between the two groups: Due...

The concentration of people with diverse socio-cultural backgrounds in particular geographic areas may boost the creation of new ideas, knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. In this paper we measure the impact of the size, skills, and diversity of immigration on the...