This contribution is concerned with the spread of new products in small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing sector. Based on an empirical study it is analyzed according to which factors planned product launches are either genuine market novelties or products that are new from the...

The sensitivity of innovation activities with respect to the business cycle is often assumed to be small. In this paper the hypothesis on cyclical dependence of innovation activities is tested for firms in the German manufacturing, and additionally for SMEs. To this end firms’ innovation...

This paper analyzes the importance of equity finance for the R&D activity of small and medium-sized enterprises. We use information on almost 6000 German SMEs from a company survey. Using the intensity of banking competition at the district level as instrument to control for endogeneity, we find...

This study examines the consequences of loan denials for the investment performance of small and medium-sized German enterprises. As a consequence of a loan denial, innovative companies experience a smaller drop in the share of actual to planned investment than non-innovative companies. The...

This paper explores how different reasons for business closure impact the probability that financial loss will be suffered by creditors. Using German small business data, the study finds that business closure due to financial problems is strongly correlated with a likelihood of financial loss....

It is known that small firms rely mainly on the CEO’s individual knowledge for developing innovations. Recent work suggests that this approach is inefficient since it underutilizes other employees’ knowledge. We study to which extent using CEOs, managers and non-managerial employees’ ideas...