We analyze the spatial diffusion of knowledge in laser technology in West Germany from 1960, when this technology began, until 2005. Laser technology research has been nearly exclusively conducted in regions that are home to a university with a physics or electrical engineering department, an...

The present paper examines one of the central elements of evolutionary thinking - competition formalized by the replicator dynamics mechanism. Using data on product characteristics of automobiles sold on the German domestic market over the period 2001-2006, we construct a competitiveness or...

It has become common within the literature of skill-biased technological change to look at technologies, as well as their impact on the demand for labor as homogeneous across industries. This paper challenges this view. Using a linked employer-employee panel of Germany differentiated by...

This paper investigates the effects of neighborhood size and network structure on strategic experimentation. We analyze a multi-arm bandit game with one safe and two risky alternatives. In this setting, risk taking produces a learning externality and an opportunity for free riding. We conduct a...

This case follows Sethu Sethunarayanan, Director of the non-profit Center for the Development of Disadvantaged People (CDDP), which is dedicated to the improvement of the Irula tribe in rural villages of southeast India. The Irulas specialize in catching rats, an activity which provides the bulk...

The aim of this paper is an investigation on the role of demand in industrial dynamics. Despite the decades-long debate on demand and innovation, theory still lacks a comprehensive analytical formulation. This paper proposes a model where demand is conceived as a peculiar blend of two...

In this paper the Malmquist index of total factor productivity is applied to a sample of 87 countries observed over the period 1960-90. This index and the method needed to quantify it, the data envelopment analysis, has substantial advantages as compared to traditional growth accounting. Two of...

This paper investigates how the survival of firms over the industry life cycle is affected by different kinds of knowledge, namely post-entry experience, pre-entry experience, and knowledge acquired by innovative activity. Therefore, a statistical survival analysis is performed for the German...

In this paper the profitability of German car manufacturing firms is related to different indicators for the knowledge incorporated in the firms since the birth of the industry in 1886. The analysis is performed with an ordered probit model, where information about the kind of exit of the firms...