How macro-level sampling affects micro-level arguments : a rejoinder to Steven Casper

Abstract

For scientists, it is a rewarding experience when our research findings are taken seriously and become the object of an international scientific debate. I thus gratefully acknowledge the interest which Steven Casper has taken in my work by responding in a recent volume of the Socio-Economic Review (Casper, 2009) to the results which Knut Lange (Lange, 2009) and myself (Herrmann, 2008a) had published in previous issues. My article did not address Casper’s research directly. However, like the work of Lange, my findings raise questions about Casper’s results as they arrive at opposite conclusions regarding the sustainability of radically innovative firms in Germany.