Publications of the Research Unit Economics of Innovation and Industrial Dynamics

  1. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-062 // 2025

    Intangible Assets and Productivity at the Firm Level: R&D versus non-R&D Intangibles

    Intangible assets have increasingly been identified as a main source of productivity gains. Since the pioneering work by Corrado, Hulten, and Sichel (2005), empirical research has largely focused on macro and…

  2. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-061 // 2025

    Firms’ Disclosure of University Ties on Their Website: An Explorative Analysis of Ist Role for Innovation Performance

    This paper explores a novel web-based indicator to examine how firms’ disclosure of university ties on their websites shapes their innovation performance. First, using data from the German Community Innovation…

  3. Discussion and Working Paper // 2025

    Looking for Innovation Beyond the Patent System: Evidence from Research Disclosures

    We study the content, novelty, and value of defensive publications relative to patents. We use a large language model (LLM) to apply the cooperative patent classification (CPC) system to a set of defensive…

  4. Discussion and Working Paper // 2025

    Effective Regulation and Firm Compliance: The Case of German Privacy Policies

    This paper explores the interaction between the enforcement of and compliance with difficult-to-enforce rules in the context of data regulation. We focus on the effect of the introduction of the GDPR and its…

  5. Discussion and Working Paper // 2025

    Competition and the Strategic Disclosure of Innovation: Theory and Evidence from Patent Applications

    We develop a duopoly signaling model in which an innovative leader strategically announces a pending patent application to influence the follower’s behavior, both in the product market (in the short run) and in…

  6. Discussion and Working Paper // 2025

    Hybrid Contracting in Repeated Interactions

    Many business relationships rely on loose arrangements and relational dynamics in early interactions, only to solidify their alliances through contractual commitments later. Using a repeated-games framework with…

  7. Discussion and Working Paper // 2025

    Regulatory Capacity in a Game of Asymmetric Regulation

    In a model of asymmetric regulation, a firm can comply with two regulatory targets, and a regulator can audit the firm for compliance. Inspection by the regulator is imperfect, and it assesses the firm’s…

  8. Discussion and Working Paper // 2025

    Successful Entrepreneurs Come From the Top of the Earned Income Distribution

    Identifying high growth startups ex-ante and fostering their success is an important policy challenge. Using Swedish registry data, we show that previous labor market earnings of entrepreneurs is a simple…