We use the prolonged Greek crisis as a case study to understand how a lasting economic shock affects the innovation strategies of firms in economies with moderate innovation activities. Adopting the 3-stage CDM model, we explore the link between R&D, innovation, and productivity for different size groups of Greek manufacturing firms during the prolonged crisis. At the first stage, we find that the ...
Sovereign borrowers may tighten their fiscal stance in order to signal their creditworthiness to lenders. In a model of sovereign debt with incomplete information, I show that a trustworthy country may reduce its debt beyond the optimal level in order to separate itself from less reliable countries. Since austerity is costly, the gains in the price of debt from separating need to be high enough, as ...
Understanding the causes of the slowdown in aggregate productivity growth is key to maintaining the competitiveness of advanced economies and ensuring long-term economic prosperity. This paper is the first to provide evidence that investment in intangible capital, despite having a positive effect on productivity at the micro level, is a driver of the weak productivity performance at the aggregate level ...
Objective: Leaders differ in their personalities from non- leaders. However, when do these differences emerge? Are leaders “born to be leaders” or does their personality change in preparation for a leadership role and due to increasing leadership experience? Method: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we examined personality differences between leaders (N = 2683 leaders, women: n ...
We investigate how R&D spillovers propagate across firms linked through Research Joint Ventures (RJVs). Building on the framework developed by Bloom et al. (2013) which considers the opposing effects of knowledge spillovers and product market rivalry, we extend the model to account for RJV cooperation. Since the firm’s decision to join a RJV is endogenous, we build a model of RJV participation. The ...
We combine theory and evidence on incubator and accelerator programmes and their effects on urban economic development. These structured co-working programmes have grown rapidly. However, a rich descriptive literature reveals little about their impact on participants or surrounding urban areas. We situate programmes in a conceptual framework of co-location tools, theorise objectives and benefits and ...
The purpose of this study is to identify whether an innovative company’s likelihood of facing financial constraints is different when the company possesses a public procurement contract (PP). Theory suggests that the treatment effects of public procurement, particularly when mediated by the demand-pull effect, may lower a company’s funding constraints for innovation. We test this theory and apply extended ...
Venture capital (VC) is often seen as an instrumental tool that allows many start-ups to pursue innovation with the potential to shake-up current markets and/or to replace incumbents. Using a highly granular, project-level dataset from preclinical diabetes R&D, this paper shows that VCs actively steer the direction of R&D and streamline activities of research focused firms (pipeline firms)...
The tremendous growth of digital transactions – mainly through online platforms - is profoundly affecting the way we interact and opening vast opportunities to improve our lives. Consumers are benefiting from an unprecedented proliferation of new services and products that previously were too costly to be developed and marketed to customers. At the same time, the characteristics of platform...
Welfare is traditionally understood through social security decommodifying labor markets or social investment policies. In the domain of housing, however, welfare for homeowners is largely hidden in the tax codes’ fiscal exemptions. Based on a content analysis of legislation, this paper introduces a novel yearly database of 37 countries between 1910 and 2020 to uncover the “hidden welfare state” of ...