There is still hardly any empirical evidence on how divergent broadband technologies, and, by extension, bandwidth levels, influence GDP growth, or on the extent of spatial externalities at a regional level. Our study aims to assess the economic benefits of high-speed broadband networks within...

Studies for established market economies such as West Germany (Fritsch and Mueller, 2007), and Sweden (Andersson and Koster, 2011) have shown that regional start-up rates tend to show a relatively high level of persistence and path dependency over periods of 10-15 years. One main reason for this...

Several theoretical approaches to explaining economic growth focus on externalities arising from interactions between economic agents. A frequently discussed source of such externalities is regional diversity of the industry structure. A large number of empirical studies support the argument...

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the geographical diffusion of photovoltaic installations in Germany quantitatively and to test if preexisting photovoltaic systems stimulate further installations nearby; thus we investigate to which extent knowledge flows depend on geographic...

We analyse the effect of public Research and Development (R&D) subsidies on private sector innovativeness for a cross-section of East German firms applying different matching estimations, which are primary based on an estimate of a propensity score. To do so, we use a until now unexplored...

The ability to adjust to structural change is vital to economic development, and entries can be active participants in this process. This paper aims to shed some light on the relation between entrepreneurship and growth by arguing that entrepreneurial activity relates to growth via reallocation...

Regions in Germany are facing an intensifying structural change towards the knowledge economy which is affecting spatial patterns of growth. . Features of such a change know many facets: fierce competition for skilled, mobile and motivated labor force, unemployment of non-qualified labor, longer...

We demonstrate that almost one half of the observed wage gap between East and West Germany reflects differences in worker, establishment, and regional characteristics rather than differences in productivity at the establishment level. Regional price and establishment size differentials alone...

This paper assesses the extent to which cooperation impacts innovation performance of firms in rural regions characterized by a solid economic performance despite a low-technology industrial structure. Particular emphasis is placed on the spatial and functional dimension of cooperation. Generic...