Innovation panel surveys in Germany: the Mannheim Innovation Panel

This chapter presents the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP), which is the German part of the Community Innovation Surveys (CIS). Differently to most national CIS, the MIP is an annual survey based on a panel sample, enabling the production of annual innovation indicators. Annual panel data also facilitates investigations into the persistence of innovation activities, and whether persistence is beneficial for firm performance. The chapter presents main survey characteristics and analyses the response behaviour of firms over time. It discusses challenges of a panel survey, such as panel mortality and consistency of responses over time. A separate section is devoted to the analysis of innovation indicators over time. The chapter then turns to the persistence of innovation activities and investigates whether continuous, discontinuous or no innovation activities systematically affect firm performance. The results show that product innovation persistence is critical for achieving higher levels of productivity.

Peters, Bettina and Christian Rammer (2023), Innovation panel surveys in Germany: the Mannheim Innovation Panel, in: Fred Gault, Anthony Arundel, Erika Kraemer-Mbula (Eds.), Second Edition, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, Northampton, 54-87