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 data at the bank‐firm level for a large sample of small firms collected through the 8th UniCredit Survey conducted in 2011, we investigate the extent to which banks of different size reward more innovative firms, in terms of both access to lending and volume of credit granted. First we...