In an a priori view, it is usually assumed that the business cycle of manufacturing industries leads the business cycle of the service sector. This seems to be even more plausible for the relationship between business-related services, whose high growth rates in recent years were largely due to...

Business cycles reflect changes over time in the amount of trade between individuals. In this paper we show that incorporating explicitly intra-temporal gains from trade between individuals into a macroeconomic model can provide new insight into the potential mechanisms driving economic...

The components of GDP (residential investment, durables, nondurables, equipment and software, and business structures) display a pronounced lead-lag structure. We investigate the implications of this lead-lag structure for the cross-section of asset returns. We find that the leading GDP...

Determinants of a firm?s export-sales ratio (degree of internationalisation) are frequently discussed in the literature related to individual firms? export activities. Stylised facts show a positive relationship between firm size and firm age on the one hand and the firm?s export-sales ratio on...

Nanomaterials are seen as a key technology for the 21st Century, and much is expected of them in terms of innovation and economic growth. They could open the way to many radically new applications, which would form the basis of innovative products. In this context, it seems all the more...

Searching for external knowledge has frequently been characterized as crucial for firm success. However, little is known about how the direction of search strategies influences innovation performance. In this paper, we argue that firms need to specialize their search strategy and that its...

The relationship between individual firms? export behaviour and firm performance has been studied extensively in the economic literature. However, most studies from the field of economics only distinguish between exporting and non-exporting companies, using the firms? export status as a binary...

We estimate the determinants of various types of product innovation. Knowledge spillovers from rivals have a positive impact on incremental innovations. This impact is largely independent of the participation in R&D cooperations. Spillovers exert no such independent influence on drastic...

This paper investigates whether failure in innovation at the firm level can account for cross-country heterogeneity in manufacturing productivity growth. There is no strong evidence in the literature on the existence of such link. Our work, however, differs in a number of ways from much of the...

This paper analyses the relationship between firm productivity and export behavior in German manufacturing firms. We examine whether productivity increases the probability of exporting, and assert that there is a causal relationship from high productivity to entering foreign markets, as...