Financial constraints can severely limit the development of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and are very likely to affect innovative firms. In order to lower the barriers to firm growth, in 2014 the European Commission introduced the SME Instrument with the specific aim to support...

Direct public support for business R&D is a well-established remedy to market failures, yet empirical evidence on its effectiveness yields conflicting results. The paper investigates the impact of the first European public R&D grant program targeting small and medium enterprises (i.e. the SME...

The global semiconductor industry is undergoing several forms of structural change simultaneously. The structure of market demand is shifting from one dominated by personal computers to a more diverse array of heterogeneous niches, largely resulting from global diffusion of the Internet and...