This paper analyses the influence of universities on Italian firms’ probability to innovate. Using firm-level data, we focus on institutionalised technology transfer (TT) activities in universities, namely spin-offs, patents and research contracts. Results show that TT activities play a...

There is a substantial heterogeneity in productivity when comparing individual firms. However, even when heterogeneity is found, some questions still remain unaddressed. For instance, when focusing on EU nothing is known about the importance of firms' heterogeneity compared with that of...

In this paper, we investigate whether CEO characteristics (owner-manager status, age and gender) influence firm innovative performance and test empirically if the effect differs for market and transition economies. We use cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms in six EU countries and in...