The present paper first discusses theoretically the different incentives of managerversus owner-controlled firms for investment into innovative activity. In addition, the role of debt financing is analyzed. Subsequently the results from an empirical study on the determinants of innovative activity measured by patent applications are presented. A sample of German firms covering 2,793 observation...

China became the second-largest economy behind the USA in 2010. While there is quite some macroeconomic research documenting the technological catching-up of China as a nation, there is only little research studying how individual Chinese firms are catching up. This paper draws on the open innovation perspective to explore how Chinese firms improve their innovative performance. Our empirical an...

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from 732 medium-sized firms in the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level productivity, profitability, Tobin’s Q, and survival rates. Management practices also display significant cross-country differences, with U.S. firms on average...

This paper considers how competition can affect aggregate innovative activity through its effects on firms’ decision whether or not to vertically integrate. A moderate increase in competition enhances innovation incentives, too much competition discourages innovative effort. These effects generates an inverted-U relationship between competition and innovation and between competition and the inc...

In this note, a wide range of innovation indicators are analysed in order to describe the innovation behaviour of manufacturing firms in LAC using the recently released Enterprise Surveys 2010. The Enterprise Surveys define innovation rates as the share of firms introducing product and process innovations. The survey also measures the proportion of firms investing in research and development (R...

The Impact of Cultural Diversity on Innovation: Evidence from Dutch Firm-Level Data Due to the growth in international migration in recent decades, the workforce of firms in host countries has become considerably more diverse, both demographically and culturally. It is an important question for firms and for governments to ask whether there are some productivity-enhancing externalities gained f...

Firms have to keep innovating if they want maintain competitive advantage; hence, this study investigates the innovation activities in Nigerian firms considering role Nigeria plays African economy. Specifically, objectives of are (1) determine factors that affect firms’ innovative and (2) evaluate impact decision on performance or product firms. 2014 Enterprise survey data conducted by World Ba...

In this paper, we explore the relationship between innovation activity, productivity, and exports using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990-1998. Our results – based on nonparametric tests – suggest that firm innovation status is critical in explaining the positive export-productivity association documented in prior research. For the sample of small innovating firms, we find no sign...

Abstract We propose the use of online indicators, scraped from firms’ websites, to predict default risk for a sample Spanish firms via nonlinear discriminant analysis and logistic regression model.

This article addresses network alignment through an investigation of network governance (coordination) and structure, and examines how regional level network governance and structure influence the effectiveness of technology policy to improve local firms’ innovativeness in a developing country context. It examines whether network governance and structure have a consistent influence on firms’ in...