It is widely acknowledged that firms performing R&D investments are very likely to undergo financial constraints due to their specific characteristics, which make external debt an imperfect substitute for internal finance, especially for small sized enterprises (Carpenter and Petersen, 2002; Hall,...

We analyzed the scientific productivity of a sample of academic scientists that contribute to the field of Materials Science in the post-patenting period, by means of several econometric techniques suitable to treat unobserved heterogeneity, excess zeros and incidental truncation. Although...

This paper contributes to the debate upon the trade-off between science and technology by looking at how the scientific performances of a researcher relate ex-ante to his/her attitude to patent, during his/her academic career. We run an event history analysis explaining the hazard for a...

We study the effect of financing constraints on the decision to do R&D and on the level of R&D investment using survey data and complete financial accounting data on a large number of Italian manufacturing SMEs from 2001 to 2003. We use a direct indicator of credit constraints and employ an...

The main goal of this paper is to assess the impact of product innovation on the economic performance of firms operating in medium and high-tech industries in general and of SMEs in particular. Using information from a large and unique dataset on Italian firms we estimate, by means of propensity...

This paper assesses the role of relationship lending in explaining simultaneously the innovation activity of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), their probability to export (i.e. the extensive margin) and their share of exports on total sales conditional on exporting (i.e. the intensive margin)....

This paper assesses the role of relationship lending in explaining simultaneously the innovation activity of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), their probability to export (i.e. the extensive margin) and their share of exports on total sales conditional on exporting (i.e. the intensive margin)....

Do the additionality effects of R&D tax credits vary across sectors? The paper presents a microeconometric analysis of this question for three countries: Norway, Italy and France. We use a panel of firm-level data from three waves of the Innovation Surveys carried out in these countries,...

It is well known that not all innovations are patented, but the exact volume of innovative activities undertaken outside the coverage of patent protection and, relatedly, the actual propensity to patent an innovation in different contexts remain, to a major degree, a matter of speculation. This...

Using a dataset including more than 6,000 Italian small firms over the period 2010-2012, we find an higher credit growth rate for companies that employ Ict in a more widespread and sophisticated way. This may be related to the improvement of the transparency of small businesses connected with...