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This paper investigates the R&D persistence of R&D active firms in different markets with different intensities of competition, based on firm-level panel data for the period 1996-2008. In a dynamic setting of the empirical model it turns out that persistence is strongly related to market competition (measured by the number of principal competitors). Persistence of R&D expenditures is more likely to be observed in markets with few principal competitors (between 6 and 10) and is very unlikely to be observed in polypolistic type of markets (more than 50 competitors). These results call for a stronger coordination between competition policy and innovation promotion policy, since the former basically aims at larger markets with many competitors, while the latter aims at persistence of R&D efforts and thus markets with fewer competitors., KOF Working Papers, 290

KOF Studies, 9

This paper investigates empirically the impact of diversity on the innovation performance of a firm. We created a measure for diversity that mirrors differences in the resource base of firms within an industry and tested its impact on innovation in addition to more traditional factors like technology-push, demand-pull, and firm-size, based on panel data stemming from three representative cross sectional surveys carried out in the years 1996, 1999, and 2002 respectively. In fact, diversity has a significant positive impact on the innovation intensity of firms and thus supports more theoretical findings in this area. We also find empirical evidence for the technology push and the demand pull hypotheses as well as the importance of competition for innovation., KOF Working Papers, 165