Several scholars as well as industry professionals have claimed that there is a "software-biased shift" in the nature and direction of innovation in that software development is a core part of innovation activities in firms across a wide array of industries. Empirical firm-level evidence of such...

We use longitudinal, disease-level data to analyze the impact of pharmaceutical innovation on longevity and medical expenditure in Sweden, where mean age at death increased by 1.88 years during the period 1997-2010. Pharmaceutical innovation is estimated to have increased mean age at death by...

We analyze the frequency and nature by which new firms are acquired by established businesses. Acquisitions are often considered to reflect a technology transfer process and to also constitute one way in which a “symbiosis” between new technology-based firms (NTBFs) and established...

New technology-based firms (NTBFs) are usually restricted by limited ownership and management structures. This paper explores whether acquisition, particularly that by multinational enterprises (MNEs), promotes the growth of NTBFs. Based on micro-level longitudinal data, we construct a large...

We investigate the relationship between the survival performance of new technologybased firms (NTBFs) over the business cycle and compare them against other entrepreneurial firms. Our data comprise the entire population of entrepreneurial firms entering the Swedish economy from 1991 to 2002,...

The paper focuses on energy transitions in Europe over the last four centuries. Special attention is given to the models of theoretical explanations for the historical energy transitions and how these may be empirically assessed. The twin model of serial substitutions (supply side) and energy...

This study investigates the determinants of R&D expenditures in the Swedish pharmaceutical industry from the 1960s to the mid 1990s. Various proxies for the rate of return of R&D (e.g. expected profit, sales and R&D productivity) as well as the availability of internal funding (proxied by past...

The paper studies innovative performance of 130 Swedish corporations for 1993-94, using number of patents per corporation as a function of internal and external knowledge sources to the corporation. A coherent way of handling accessibility measures, within and between corporations located across...

This paper attempts to explain knowledge production in Swedish functional regions as measured by the number of patent applications. Recognizing that technological opportunity differs across sectors, a sectoral analysis is conducted. The Knowledge Production Function (KPF) approach is applied in...

Patent data play an important role as indicators of inventive and innovative activity across regions. This paper examines if the geographical distribution changes and in what direction if patent data are quality-adjusted. A quality index is constructed by means of factor analysis on the...