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...

The paper deals with a new approach in German innovation policy that organizes contests of initiatives for public funds. Based on an overview of the different programs we investigate the advantages and problems of such an approach. We find that this type of policy may have a large impact and...

We analyze the spatial diffusion of laser-technology in Germany during the early phase of development, between 1960 and 2005. Research in this new technological field began in a few larger centers and then spread to other regions. In the early years, a large firm of the electronics industry...

We investigate the effects that regional start-up activity has on employment in new and in incumbent businesses. The analysis is performed for West German regions over the 1987-2002 period. It shows that the effects of new businesses on employment in the incumbents are significantly positive and...

This paper investigates the impact of new firms' quality on the magnitude of their employment effects. Our results clearly show that the quality of start-ups, measured by their affiliation to sectors and innovative industries, strongly influences the direct and the overall employment...