The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate R&D activities onfirms’ performance, measured by labour productivity. To this end, the stochastic frontiertechnique is applied, basing the analysis on a unique unbalanced longitudinal datasetconsisting of 532 top...

Research and Development (R&D) and innovation are crucial features of the seed industry. To supportlarge R&D investments by the private sector, strong intellectual property rights, such as patents, arenecessary. The exclusivity granted by patents naturally creates market power positions and...

Using a panel data set of 361 German corporations for the period 1991-1996 we test the hypothesis that firms with more efficient governance structures have higher profitabilities. To determine efficiency we compare firms with respect to ownership concentration, the identity of owners, capital...

Although there has been an intensive debate on the relative merits of different sys-tems of corporate governance, empirical evidence on the link between corporate governance andfirm performance almost exclusively refers to the market-oriented Anglo-Saxon system. This papertherefore investigates...

In the UK, SSAP 13 requires that firms immediately expense most of their R&D expenditures.The reported earnings of high-R&D expenditure firms are therefore likely to convey less valuerelevantinformation to investors than those of less research-intensive firms. Using a sample offirms from the...

This paper reviews the literature on the economics of intellectual property rights (IPR), with a particular focus on the main industrial property rights of patents and trade marks. Intellectual property rights arise from the legal protection accorded to certain inventions or creations. We begin...

We analyze financial constraints for R&D, where we account for heterogeneityamong investments which has been neglected in previous literature. According toeconomic theory, investments should be distinguished by their degree ofuncertainty, e.g. routine R&D versus cutting-edge R&D. Financial...

We investigate the interdependence of debt financing and R&D activities of young firms.Using micro-level data of the KfW/ZEW Start-up Panel, our estimation results show that firmcharacteristics are more important than personal characteristics of the founders for explainingyoung firms’...

This paper investigates interregional differences in cooperative behavior ofmanufacturing establishments in the field of research and development (R&D).The empirical analysis for eleven European regions reveals a number ofsignificant differences between these regions in the propensity to...

Literature suggests that location should matter for R&D activities. However, attempts to empirically detect differences in innovation activity between regions have so far been rather unsuccessful. Using a unique data set which contains comparable information about manufacturing enterprises in...