In “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,“ Paul David challenges an overarching, mainstream assumption that market forces should indeed lead toward efficient and optimal outcomes that include technology selection. David seeks to explain the endurance of technologies that his use of historiography judges inefficient and suboptimal. We challenge David's research, arguing that failure to consider the original institutional economics (OIE) tradition limits his grasp of complex processes to reduced notions of “path dependence“ based upon a “lock-in.“ This inquiry offers an alternative account of QWERTY and technology selection based upon Veblenian thinking, further supported by Paul Dale Bush's emphasis upon the ceremonial.

Local economic development policies worldwide perceive business incubation as an effective measure to promote regional growth through the support of young and innovative ventures. The common assumption is that incubation promotes firm growth, in particular after these firms graduated from their incubator organizations. This article investigates the long-term performance of 324 graduate firms from five German business incubators (incubated between 1990 and 2006) after they have (successfully) completed their incubation. The present study does not suffer from a survivor bias, meaning that performance data of non-surviving firms is also included. Using employment and sales measures as performance indicators, this study contributes to our knowledge with regard to long-term incubator firm performance after graduation. While in the first years after graduation there is significant growth of formerly incubated firms, further results do not support the presumption of continuous firm growth beyond incubation. A minority of graduate firms exhibits a strong increase in performance, but the majority of firms do not experience considerable growth.

Forschung und Entwicklung werden als Treiber des technischen Fortschritts und Garanten der internationalen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit angesehen. Der Freistaat Sachsen nimmt hinsichtlich der Ausgaben für Forschung und Entwicklung im Vergleich zu den Neuen Ländern eine Spitzenposition ein und kann sich auch mit einer Reihe westdeutscher Länder messen, ausgenommen Baden-Württemberg, Bayern und Hessen. Die immer noch relativ niedrige Forschungsintensität der Wirtschaft im Vergleich zur öffentlichen Forschung ist strukturell bedingt. Auf

aggregierter Ebene kompensieren die öffentlichen Forschungsausgaben dieses transformationsbedingte „Defizit“. Mit Blick auf diese Situation besitzt der Technologietransfer zwischen Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft, insbesondere

von Universitäten zu Unternehmen, eine hohe Bedeutung. Den Überlegungen der systemischen Innovationstheorie folgend sind verschiedene Kanäle des Transfers von Wissen zwischen Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft möglich. Dazu zählen die Auftragsforschung der Universitäten, Patentaktivitäten, Publikationen sowie Verbundprojekte. Die empirischen Befunde zu diesen ausgewählten Mechanismen des Technologietransfers lassen erkennen, dass der Freistaat Sachsen im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern eine solide Position einnimmt, aber auch noch Entwicklungspotenziale bestehen. Eine technologieoffen gestaltete Forschungspolitik kann dabei unterstützend wirksam sein.

The focus of this paper is on the match between strategic motives of foreign investments into Central-Eastern Europe and locational advantages offered by these countries. Our analysis makes use of the IWH-FDI-Micro Database, a unique dataset that contains information from 2009 about the determinants of locational factors, technological activity of the subsidiaries, and the potentials for knowledge spillovers in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. The analysis suggests that investors in these countries are mainly interested in low (unit) labour costs coupled with a well-trained and educated workforce and an expanding market with the high growth rates in the purchasing power of potential buyers. It also suggests that the financial crisis reduced the attractiveness of the region as a source for localised knowledge and technology. There appears to be a match between investors’ expectations and the quantitative supply of unqualified labour, not however for the supply of medium qualified workers. But the analysis suggests that it is not technology-seeking investments that are particularly content with the capabilities of their host economies in terms of technological cooperation. Finally, technological cooperation within the local host economy is assessed more favourably with domestic firms than with local scientific institutions – an important message for domestic economic policy.

This study presents empirical insight into willingness to pay (WTP) for microgeneration technologies and the relative influence of subjective consumer perceptions. First, we apply a double-bounded-contingent valuation method to elicit Irish home owners’ willingness to pay for micro wind turbines, wood pellet boilers, solar panels and solar water heaters. Utilizing findings from the adoption of innovation literature, in a second step, we assess the influence of different antecedents on WTP for each of the four technologies, including (1) home owners’ perception of product characteristics, (2) normative influences, and (3) socio demographic characteristics. Our results show that WTP varies significantly between the four technologies. More importantly, however, home owners’ hold different beliefs about the respective technologies, which significantly influence their WTP. The results provide valuable information for marketers and policy makers, aiming to promote microgeneration technologies more effectively in consumer markets.

In recent decades, the international division of labor expanded rapidly in course of globalization. In this context, highly developed countries specialized on (human) capital intensively manufactured goods and increasingly sourced parts and components from lowwage countries. Since this should be beneficial for the high-skilled and harmful for the lower qualified workforce, especially the opening up of Eastern Europe and the international integration of newly industrializing Asian economies are considered as main reasons for increasing unemployment of the lower qualified in high-wage countries. The present paper addresses this issue for selected Western European countries by analyzing factor content of trade, which allows inferring on factor demand patterns resulting from international trade. This is not only done for countries’ total external trade, but also for bilateral trade flows, using input-output analyses. Thereby, differences in factor inputs and production technologies are considered, allowing for product differentiation. According to the results, factor content of bilateral trade flows between Western European high-wage countries does hardly differ. However, the results are different for East-West trade, since exports from Western to Eastern Europe are distinctly more human capital intensively manufactured than imports of Western European high-wage countries from Eastern Europe.

Informal inter-organizational networks provide manifold opportunities to organize the transfer of information, knowledge and technology between actors. The importance of informal networks as a channel of knowledge transfer is widely acknowledged by academics and practitioners. However, there is a significant lack of discussion on their theoretical foundations and systematic empirical research on the origins, dynamics and effects of informal networking. The objective of this paper is threefold. First, we review the fragmented academic discussion of the notion of informal networking, thereby focusing on how these relationships emerge initially and what conditions (presumably) are required to make them a mutually fruitful and sustainable channel of the transfer of information and knowledge. Second, we give an up-to-date overview over most important and recent studies trying to disentangle the mechanisms of inter-organizational informal networking. Finally, we outline an agenda of future research directions which we encourage researchers to pursue in future empirical studies. Overall, six important research gaps are identified.

Knowledge of factors that determine the transition from nascent entrepreneurship into real entrepreneurship is of major importance for policies aiming to effectively stimulate start-ups. Whereas scholars concentrated on person-specific factors to explain transition probabilities, environmental characteristics have been fairly neglected. Given that entrepreneurship is a strongly localized phenomenon, this paper argues that regional entrepreneurial opportunities are a driving force behind the transition from nascent entrepreneurship to new venture creation. Based on unique data on 103 nascent entrepreneurs in the German biotechnology industry, we empirically assess the importance of regional entrepreneurial opportunities on transition probabilities. Further, we introduce a new

approach to measure nascent entrepreneurship by capturing individuals that actively participate in start-up competitions and have won at least one competition. Controlling for technology and individual characteristics, we find strong support for our hypotheses relating to the significant impact of general regional opportunities, specific regional opportunities and the entrepreneurial environment for the probability of transition from award-winning nascent entrepreneurs to real start-ups.

This dissertation applies the theory of technology accumulation to explain the internationalisation of foreign and West German multinational enterprises (MNEs) into East Germany. This theory shifts the focus from technology transfer to the international diffusion of innovation within the MNE. It rejects the position that all MNEs offer the same technological opportunities to host economies. Yet, most of the existing empirical research on postcommunist transition economies including East Germany applies the traditional technology transfer perspective. Therefore, this dissertation provides a complementary and novel approach. We assume a dynamic interaction between existing location specific technological capabilities within the host country, MNEs’ location choice, their internationalisation of research and development (R&D) and innovation, and the potential for technological spillover effects from MNEs to the host economy. The dissertation exploits information from the IWH FDI micro database on the full population of MNEs that entered East German manufacturing until 2005 and corresponding survey data. Microeconometric estimation results generate a number of novel findings: We can show that existing location specific technological capabilities affect MNEs’ general location choice within East Germany. They are not powerful enough to attract MNEs’ technological activities. Instead, the location of MNEs’ innovation requires the joint presence of technological and industry specialisation within regions, whereas foreign R&D benefits from technological specialisation in combination with a diversified industry structure. Moreover, the location of technological activity differs depending upon the underlying motive for internationalisation. Our findings suggest that the potential for technological externalities from affiliates to local firms is subject to centrally and locally driven technological heterogeneity of MNEs. Existing location specific technological capabilities do not affect the spillover potential. This hints a limited dynamic interaction of ownership and locational advantages in firms’ internationalisation. We derive implications for the technology accumulation theory as well as for various fields of science and technology policy.

This inquiry relies on an Institutionalist and Post Keynesian analysis to explore Germany's neo-liberal project, noting cumulative effects emerging as measurable economic and societal outcomes. Investments in technologies generate rising output-to-capital ratios. Increasing exports offset the Domar problem, but give rise to capital surpluses. National income redistributes in favor of capital. Novel labor market institutions emerge. Following Minsky, good times lead to bad: as seeming successes of neo-liberal policies are accompanied by financial instability, growing disparities in household incomes, and sharp declines in German exports on world markets, resulting in one of the deepest, recent contractions in the industrialized world.