 Innovation and education: Is there a "nerd effect"?No 210, Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics from Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Law and Economics Abstract: This paper investigates whether entrepreneurs with technical education are more innovative in high-tech industries than economists. The main contribution to the literature is in using the type of education as main explanatory variable for innovation. To analyze this question, the KfW/ZEW Start-Up Panel between 2005 and 2007 is used. Two independent OLS regressions are conducted for entrepreneurs with university degree and practical education. The results suggest that education matters for individuals with a university degree in high-tech industries but not for people with practical education. Having an economics degree is correlated with higher innovativeness. Therefore, for the underlying sample we do not find a nerd effect. The results depend on the underlying definition of innovation, as robustness checks show. Keywords: entrepreneurship; innovation; education (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:darddp:dar_56008 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics from Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Law and Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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