The innovation value chain (IVC) divides the innovation process into three separate links or activities: Knowledge gathering, knowledge transformation and knowledge exploitation. Here, we report a comparative panel data analysis of the IVC in Ireland and Switzerland. Both economies are small,...

Recent studies in the tradition of Schmookler have re-emphasised the potential role of demand in stimulating innovation. Here, we reconsider the role of 'home' and 'export' market demand in stimulating manufacturing innovation using comparable panel data for two small open economies - Ireland...

This paper investigates the technological orientation of firms and universities and their propensity to have knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) activities. This study looks at the technological potential for KTT and how it is used, emphasizing differences between smaller and larger firms....

This paper investigates the causal relationship between firms' research and development expenditures (R&D) and their investments into fixed capital. The literature provides two contrasting views in this respect. The first view holds that a firm's research activity causes, via the creation of...

The relevance of services FDI strongly increased over the last two decades. As goods and services differ with respect to important characteristics, one may expect that the determinants of internationalisation are not identical in manufacturing and the service sector. However, there is...

There is growing evidence that firms increasingly adopt open innovation practices. In this paper we investigate the impact of two such external knowledge acquisition strategies, ‘buy' and ‘cooperate', on firm's product innovation performance. Taking a direct (productivity) approach, we test...

Start-ups mostly have only limited internal financing. Post-entry performance should thus strongly depend on the availability of new external capital. In this study we analyze the impact of financial constraints on the performance of Swiss start-ups. Since we use cohort data, we have for some...

Firstly, we investigated the determinants of a) the propensity of Swiss firms to provide apprenticeship training, and b) the intensity of training (measured by the employment share of apprentices). We primarily were interested in the relevance as explanatory factors of the three constituent...

This paper is the first to study the factors determining labor's share of income on the level of the individual firm, employing an unusually informative panel data set. The empirical examination is concerned with Switzerland which stands out as one of the very few developed countries with a...

Hospitals are making big investments in various types of ICT, so it is important to investigate their effects on innovation and performance. In this paper is presented an empirical study in this direction, based on data for 743 hospitals from 18 European countries, which were collected in the...