Category: Innovation

What’s Innovation Economics All About?

Preface: On Wednesday I successfully defended my dissertation and am now the proud holder of PhD in business economics from KU Leuven. In this post I would like to share the opening chapter of my thesis (title: “Three Essays on Innovation Economics”) with you. It’s a bit longer than what I usually put on this blog. But I think it’s worth a look nevertheless. I don’t only give a brief, non-technical introduction into my work but also go into what fascinates me about innovation economics—a field which still lacks the recognition it deserves in mainstream economics. Continue reading What’s Innovation Economics All About?

Innovation on (government) demand?

Next week we will organize the 7th ZEW/MaCCI Conference on the Economics of Innovation and Patenting in Mannheim and the program will be great. We will have Bronwyn Hall from Berkeley and Pierre Azoulay from MIT as keynote speakers. I’m definitely looking forward to hear them speak.

Myself, I will present a new project on the relationship between public procurement and innovation. In brief the research question is the following. Continue reading Innovation on (government) demand?

Cardwell’s Law

While reading Joel Mokyr’s newest book I came across an older paper of him, which I found very interesting. It is about what Mokyr calls Cardwell’s law*— the empirical regularity that “most societies that have been technologically creative have been so for relatively short periods”. Throughout economic history successful countries in terms of innovation and economic growth have usually lost their competitive edge pretty soon again and were overtaken by others. Continue reading Cardwell’s Law

Do Most Companies Even Try to Innovate Anymore?

This post first appeared on hbr.org (Harvard Business Review, 14 April 2017).

We are living in the age of the superstar firm. Companies like Samsung, Google, or BMW—the top players in their respective industries—are prospering. Yet economic growth remains sluggish in many parts of the world. The reason for that paradox, as the OECD has warned, is that the productivity gap between firms at the global frontier and those lagging behind has widened. Continue reading Do Most Companies Even Try to Innovate Anymore?

Innovation activity in Germany is becoming more concentrated

This is an English translation of a column I published together with my colleague Christian Rammer from ZEW on oekonomenstimme.org. A pdf version can be downloaded here.

For years investments in research and development (R&D) have shown a rising trend in Germany. In 2015 they have reached a record high of 157.4 billion euro. At the same time, however, R&D expenditures are becoming concentrated within a smaller number of actors. The share of companies that invest in innovation falls steadily. As a result, innovation activities in the economy are more unevenly distributed. This column discusses possible causes for this development. Continue reading Innovation activity in Germany is becoming more concentrated

Innovation,unemployment and subjective well-being

These days, everybody is talking about the losers of globalization and how they made Trump and Brexit happen. People in industrialized countries lose their jobs due to offshoring and international competition, which leads them to vote for right-wing populists, so the common narrative goes. That might not be the full story though. Continue reading Innovation,unemployment and subjective well-being

How important is social mobility for innovation and growth?

Raj Chetty is a rising star in economics. After graduating from Harvard at the age of 23, he became an assistant professor at Berkeley, where he got tenure only four years later. Since then he won the John Bates Clark Medal in 2013 and moved to Stanford in 2015. His latest research is concerned with the question of upward mobility in society and how it affects innovation and economic growth. Continue reading How important is social mobility for innovation and growth?

Does Innovation Policy Really Work?

Last week I had the chance to attend a fantastic conference organized by the Innovation Growth Lab in London on the use of randomized control trials (RCT) in innovation policy evaluation. Field experiments to assess whether certain policies work are already very popular in fields such as development economics. But surprisingly little has been done in OECD countries to this day. Continue reading Does Innovation Policy Really Work?