This paper analyzes the consequences of radical patent-regime change by exploiting a natural experiment: the forced adoption of the Prussian patent system in territories annexed after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Compared to other German states, Prussia granted patents more restrictively by...

In the semantic architecture of the society of the knowledge the innovation concept is the fundamental brick. It is an adobe that allows to construct very different discourses frequently opposed between them, in what the purpose of its social use concerns. In the present communication we...

This paper analyzes the relationship between the three main enterprise systems (Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM)) and firms' innovational performance for process as well as product innovations. Using German firm-level data...

Investments in R&D have been identified as a cornerstone for growth and competitive advantages of firms and whole economies. We investigate the role that a firm's main bank plays for its investment in R&D. Existing literature suggests that the inherent information asymmetries of R&D projects...

This paper investigates the relationship between innovation activities and market structure in German chemical industry. We present a formal model that suggests the existence of a self-enforcing dynamic feedback between market concentration and innovation. This model is tested on the basis of...

Innovations, be they radical new products or technology improvements are widely recognized as a key factor of economic growth. To identify the factors triggering innovative activities is a main concern for economic theory and empirical analysis. As the number of hypotheses is large, the process...

The process of innovation is driven by two main factors: new inventions and institutions supporting the transformation of inventions into marketable innovations. This paper proposes a new institution, called a semi-public competition, that has been neglected by the economic literature but exists...

We study innovation and the resulting Schumpeterian economic growth that this innovation gives rise to in a model with N heterogeneous regions. For each region i where i=1,...,N, our analysis leads to five findings. First, we define the balanced growth path (BGP) allocations and the equilibrium...

Current innovation policy is the result of decades of research about the nature and role of innovation in economic growth. Such investigation has contributed to redesign our knowledge not only on the role played by innovation in economic development but also about the relationship between...

Despite of the deeply rooted belief of politicians from all over the world in the important role of Mittelstand firms, there has been surprisingly little empirical research on this issue, yet. This article contributes to the literature by studying whether the relative regional importance of...