Topic Research and Development

Innovation in Concentrating Solar Power Technologies: A Study Drawing on Patent Data

Better understanding the innovative process of renewable energy technologies is important for tackling climate change. Though concentrating solar power is receiving growing interest, innovation studies so far have explored innovative activity in solar technologies in general, ignoring the major differences between solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies. This study relies on patent data to ...

Innovative Activity in Wind and Solar Technology: Empirical Evidence on Knowledge Spillovers Using Patent Data

This paper studies technological change in renewable energies, providing empirical evidence on the determinants of innovative activity with a special emphasis on the role of knowledge spillovers. We investigate two major renewable energy technologies - wind and solar - across a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1978 to 2004. Spillovers may occur at the national level, either within the same ...

Do External Technology Acquisitions Matter for Innovative Efficiency and Productivity?

To quickly adapt to technological change and developments, and thus remain competitive, firms increasingly resort to the use of external technology. This paper investigates whether and to what extent the acquisition of external disembodied technology affects the efficiency and productivity in innovation of technology acquiring firms. Using the stochastic frontier analysis combined with a difference-in-difference ...

Innovative Activity in Wind and Solar Technology: Empirical Evidence on Knowledge Spillovers Using Patent Data

German Companies Do Less Research Abroad

Germany has profited from the internationalization of research and development (R&D) in multinational companies. While the international R&D balance sheet was balanced until 2001, foreign companies now invest more in R&D in Germany than German companies abroad. The share of R&D expenditures of German multinationals abroad is declining, whereas their global expenditures are increasing. This means the ...

Innovation Promotes Internationalization of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

In recent decades the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has increased significantly, especially in manufacturing industries. Yet in contrast to large, multinational corporations, not much is known about the international activities of SMEs. Data on East German SMEs show that size and innovative capacity have a significant influence on a company's international involvement, ...

Innovation Indicator 2009: Germany Has Still Some Catching up to Do

On behalf of the Deutsche Telekom Stiftung (Deutsche Telekom Foundation) and the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrien (Federation of German Industries) DIW Berlin has investigated Germany's innovative capacity for the fifth time in an international comparison. The survey evaluates the ability of countries to create and transform knowledge into marketable products and services (i.e., innovations) ...

What's Banking Sector Concentration Got to Do with Private Equity Market?

The paper investigates the link between bank concentration and a country's buyout market. We perform a macro level analysis for 15 European countries during 1997-2007. We estimate the elasticity of the country i's buyout market to country i's concentration in the banking sector. Our major finding suggests that the more concentrated the banking sector is, the better it is for the size of the buyout ...

Smart Capital in German Start-ups: An Empirical Analysis

What kind of smart capital relational investors actually supply, especially in a bank-based financial system such as the German one, is still an open question. We divide smart capital into single components and conduct a survey with 85 German suppliers of start-up finance. The results show that the degree of 'smartness' is determined by the financial product used and partly also by the financiers' ...

Extensive Research Does Not Imply Extensive Funding

In Germany, two statistics examine the development and structure of public funding for research and development (R&D) in the private sector of the economy: the R&D statistics of the so-called "Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft - SV", a joint initiative of German industries to promote science an higher education (SV), and, secondly, the statistics of the "Bundesministerium für Bildung und ...