Suchergebnisse

Mikroökonomisch fundierte Einführung: Sie zeigt, wie man auch ohne Vorkenntnisse der Produktionsfunktion zu Aussagen über die produktive Effizienz kommen kann. Die Autoren stellen den Ansatz der nichtparametrischen Frontierfunktionsanalyse vor und erweitern ihn über verschiedene Schritte. Diese Schritte umfassen die Analyse verschiedener Formen variabler Skalenerträge und die Ermittlung der produktivsten Unternehmensgröße.

This book addresses central issues in evolutionary and Schumpeterian accounts of industrial competition, learning, and innovation. It contains a collection of twelve papers which are oriented toward exploring methodological issues in evolutionary and related scholarship. Reflecting the diversity of work in evolutionary scholarship, a range of methodologies are employed in the papers, including simulation, experiments, and econometric analysis. Some of the papers use well established models to takle new questions and problems. Others introduce entirely new approaches, which the authors indicate are still in a state of infancy and await further development. The collection attempts to raise even more interest in evolutionary economics, to provide some suggestions for future research directions, and to initiate a lively discussion of the issues raised

We study the effects of a German national cluster policy on the structure of collaboration networks. The empirical analysis is based on original data that was collected in fall 2011 and late summer 2013 with cluster actors (firms and public research organizations) who received government funding. Our results show that over time the program was effective in initiating new cooperation between cluster actors and in intensifying existing linkages. Newly formed linkages are to a substantial amount among actors who did not receive direct funding for a joint R&D project, which indicates an additional, mobilisation effect of the policy. Furthermore, we observe differential developments regarding clusters´ spatial embeddedness. Some clusters tend to increase their localisation, whereas others increase their connectivity to international partners. The centrality of large firms increased over time, indicating their prominent role as preferred partners for R&D cooperation within the clusters while it is the opposite case for public actors.

The last decades saw a pronounced shift in innovation policy in Germany and many other countries towards increased funding of cooperative R&D. Over the last years, competitions between regional initiatives pushed this trend even further by adding a regional perspective, by increasing the scope of funding, and by fostering interaction between a large number of actors. In 2008 the German ministry for education and research (BMBF) started the Leading-Edge Cluster competition (Spitzencluster-Wettbewerb) in which 15 clusters were selected in three waves (2008, 2010, 2012) and are funded for a five-year period with up to 40 million Euro each. Our paper presents selected results regarding the influence of government funding on cooperation networks within five of the clusters that were successful in the first wave of the Spitzencluster-Wettbewerb. More specifically, we analyse the extent of policy influence on the network of most important cooperation partners, its geographic reach, and the changes of network structure in general. Our empirical analysis is based on original data that was collected in 2011 with cluster actors (firms and public research) who received government funding. Our results indicate that the program was quite effective in initiating new cooperations between cluster actors and in intensifying existing linkages. The vast majority of the linkages which are influenced by the cluster competition are between actors located in the cluster region. With respect to the influence of the cluster competition on network structure, we find an increase in network centralization. Small and medium sized enterprises used the chance to connect with the local stars, but not as much among each other.

In studies looking at firm survival over the industry life cycle knowledge is one of the most important determinants. Different kinds of knowledge, namely post-entry experience, pre-entry experience, and knowledge acquired by innovative activity positively influence the sur-vival chances. This paper investigates how the kinds of knowledge are able to compensate each other. Therefore, a statistical survival analysis is performed for the German automobile industry (1886-1939) which applies an estimation approach that links instrumental variables with the Cox regression. The results highlight that innovative activity is able to compensate for lacking post-entry experience, supporting Schumpeterian creative destruction.