This dissertation consists of five distinct empirical papers covering two large areas of research that are rather independent from each other: the economics of ageing and the economics of innovation. The first three chapters cover the impact of intergeneration interaction on the parents of adult...

The existing literature on cluster embeddedness largely neglects the impact of finance on the development of firms' network linkages. This is striking in so far that particularly venture capital is often referred to as "smart money" providing firms not only with funds but also with network...

Dramatic recent expansion of intellectual property protection in the field of biotechnology has led to concerns that ongoing innovation will be blocked unless action is taken to preserve access to and freedom to operate with those tools that are important for further research and development....

The paper discusses two types of problems related to assigning or denying intellectual property rights to agro-biotechnological innovations in the relation between developed and developing countries. First, protecting property rights on innovations creates incentives towards further research and...

This document (of 262 pages) comprises the proceedings of a roundtable on intellectual property rights and competition policy, with a focus on biotechnology, held by the OECD's Competition Committee at the OECD in June 2004. The roundtable addressed the proper role of competition agencies in the...

We evaluate the effects of state-provided financial incentives for biotech companies, which are part of a growing trend of placed-based policies designed to spur innovation clusters. We estimate that the adoption of subsidies for biotech employers by a state raises the number of star biotech...

In an earlier study we analysed how the United States Patent and Trade Mark Office, the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office (jointly referred to as the 'Trilateral Offices' or TOs) assessed reach-through patent claims in biotechnology, under the requirements of 'utility', 'written...

We examine factors influencing the relative productivity of different geographic locations. Our analysis of the Canadian biotechnology industry during the 1990s reveals that inventive and uninventive locations are distinguishable within small geographic areas corresponding to roughly 7,000...

In the second half of the nineties, a number of EU Member States went through intense public controversies over agro-food biotechnology. These controversies occurred almost synchronously, brought about parallel issue-framings and actor-constellations, led national governments to adopt...