This paper studies the persistence of innovation and the dynamics of innovation output in Dutch manufacturing using firm data from three waves of the Community Innovation Surveys (CIS), pertaining to the periods 1994-1996, 1996-1998, and 1998-2000. We estimate by maximum likelihood a dynamic panel data type 2 tobit model accounting for individual effects and handling the initial conditions problem. We find that there is no evidence of true persistence in achieving technological product or process innovations, while past shares of innovative sales condition, albeit to a small extent, current shares of innovative sales.

In this paper we examine the importance of financial and other obstacles to innovation in the Netherlands using statistical information from the CIS 3.5 innovation survey. We report results on the effect of these obstacles on the firms' decision to abandon, prematurely stop, seriously slow down, or not to start an innovative project. These results are compared with those from other studies in the Netherlands and other countries. We end with a discussion of policy measures that have been taken to overcome, or at least attenuate these obstacles, such as R&D tax incentives, venture capital financing and policy mix pakages.

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Using direct information on financial constraints from questionnaires, rather than the commonly used balance sheet information, this paper presents evidence that, controlling for traditional factors as size, market share, cooperative arrangement, and expected profitability, financial constraints affect a firm's decision of how much to invest in R&D activities. Apart from these constraints, other hampering factors as market uncertainty and institutional bottlenecks, regulations and organizational rigidities also affect R&D investment. A semiparametric estimator of sample selection is employed to control for potential endogeneity of the regressors. The paper also shows that old firms and firms that belong to a group are less financially constrained when it comes to undertaking R&D activities. For the estimation a semiparametric binary choice model is used.

In teaching introductory statistics to first year students, the Maastricht University uses a blended learning environment that allows them to attune available learning tools to personal preferences and needs, in order to address large diversity in students. That diversity is a direct consequence of a heterogeneous inflow of primarily international students, transferring from different secondary school systems with large differences in prior knowledge, and transferring from very different cultural backgrounds. In this empirical contribution, the authors focus on the role an adaptive online tutorial as component of the blend can play in bridging the consequences of a broad range of differences such as prior mastery of the subject, cultural background, and learning approaches. They do so by investigating the relationships between the intensity of the use of the e-tutorial and students’ characteristics related to nationality, cultural background, learning styles, goal-setting behavior, achievement motivations, self-concept constructs, and subject attitudes.