nep-sbm New Economics Papers
on Small Business Management
Issue of 2012‒06‒05
ten papers chosen by
Joao Carlos Correia Leitao
University of Beira Interior and Technical University of Lisbon

  1. Does Self-Employment Measure Entrepreneurship? Evidence from Great Britain By Giulia Faggio; Olmo Silva
  2. Les déterminants de l’innovation dans les services : une analyse à partir des formes d’innovation développées By Michelle Mongo; Corinne Autant-Bernard
  3. Les déterminants de l'innovation dans les services : une analyse à partir des formes d'innovation By Michelle Mongo
  4. Micro evidence for sources of innovation in European countries By Piacentino, Davide
  5. Open Innovation and Firm's Survival: An empirical investigation by using a linked dataset of patent and enterprise census By MOTOHASHI Kazuyuki
  6. The Role of Data and Knowledge in Firms’ Service and Product Innovation By Heli Koski
  7. An Agent-Based Model of Schumpeterian Competition By Alessandro Caiani
  8. What are the channels for technology sourcing? Panel data evidence from German companies By Harhoff, Dietmar; Mueller, Elisabeth; Van Reenen, John
  9. Does New Entry Drive Out Incumbents? Evidence from establishment-level data in Japan By ITO Keiko; KATO Masatoshi
  10. Assessing the effect of public subsidies on firm R&D investment : a survey By César Alonso-Borrego; José I. Galán-Zazo; Francisco Javier Forcadell; José Ángel Zúñiga-Vicente

  1. By: Giulia Faggio; Olmo Silva
    Abstract: Research on entrepreneurship often uses information on self-employment to proxy for business creation and innovative behaviour. However, little evidence has been collected on the link between these measures. In this paper, we use data from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) combined with data from the Business Structure Database (BSD), and the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) to study the relation between self-employment, business creation and innovation. In order to do so, we aggregate individual and firm-level data at the Travel-to-Work Area (TTWA) and investigate how the incidence of self-employment correlates with the density of business start-ups and innovative firms. Our results show that in urban areas a higher incidence of self-employment positively and strongly correlates with more business creation and innovation, but this is not true for rural areas. Further analysis suggests that this urban/rural divide is related to lack of employment opportunities in rural areas, which might push some workers into self-employment as a last resort option.
    Keywords: Entrepreneurship, self-employment, spatial distribution
    JEL: L26 J21 R12 R23
    Date: 2012–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0109&r=sbm
  2. By: Michelle Mongo (Université de Lyon, Lyon, F-69007, France ; CNRS, GATE Lyon St Etienne,Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, F-42000, France); Corinne Autant-Bernard
    Abstract: This article makes a study of the influence of innovation determinants on their ability to innovate and the different types of innovation (technological and non-technological) developed within service sector. The statistics are provided from the community Innovation Survey. The estimation method is a probit with selection from the framework proposed by Heckman (1979) and refined by Van De Ven and Van Praag (1981). The first equation explains the innovative capacity and the second explicates the implementation of different types of innovation (technological and / or non-technological). The analysis focuses on the comparison of innovation behaviors in service sector and industry. The results demonstrate that the determinants of innovation ability are similar for service sector and industry and the differences are issued from different forms of innovation developed. More precisely, it comes from the orientation of each sector towards more or less technological innovation. The results bring up the question of the appropriateness of current policies of innovation especially in R&D’ promotion. The author proposes to take into account the consideration of different types of activities and innovation for this policy and suggests to focus on the lowtechnological but innovative and non-technological activities like intellectual services.
    Keywords: Non-technological Innovation, Services, Community Innovation Survey
    JEL: O31
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:1214&r=sbm
  3. By: Michelle Mongo (GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS : UMR5824 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - École Normale Supérieure - Lyon)
    Abstract: This article makes a study of the influence of innovation determinants on their ability to innovate and the different types of innovation (technological and non-technological) developed within service sector. The statistics are provided from the community Innovation Survey. The estimation method is a probit with selection from the framework proposed by Heckman (1979) and refined by Van De Ven and Van Praag (1981). The first equation explains the innovative capacity and the second explicates the implementation of different types of innovation (technological and / or non-technological). The analysis focuses on the comparison of innovation behaviors in service sector and industry. The results demonstrate that the determinants of innovation ability are similar for service sector and industry and the differences are issued from different forms of innovation developed. More precisely, it comes from the orientation of each sector towards more or less technological innovation. The results bring up the question of the appropriateness of current policies of innovation especially in R&D' promotion. The author proposes to take into account the consideration of different types of activities and innovation for this policy and suggests to focus on the lowtechnological but innovative and non-technological activities like intellectual services.
    Keywords: Non-technological Innovation; Services; Community Innovation Survey
    Date: 2012–05–23
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00700457&r=sbm
  4. By: Piacentino, Davide
    Abstract: This paper investigates sources of product or process innovation, such as investments in research and development, machinery, personnel training and management systems, by examining microdata from eight European countries. We pay particular attention to the effect of research and development in favouring the absorption of new technologies, i.e. the absorptive capacity. Significant positive effects of each source on both product and process innovations are found. Significant evidence of positive absorptive capacity emerges only in firms with low predicted probabilities of introducing innovation.
    Keywords: Innovation; Absorption; Microdata; European countries
    JEL: D21 O32 O31
    Date: 2012–05–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:39110&r=sbm
  5. By: MOTOHASHI Kazuyuki
    Abstract: This paper uses patent filings as an indicator of innovation and investigates the relationship between innovation and firms' survival, based on the linked dataset of the Census of Establishment and Enterprise and the Institute of Intellectual Property (IIP) Patent Database for Japanese firms. We have constructed the indicators on the organization of innovative activities, such as external collaboration in inventions and the type of collaborative partners, and disentangle two competing factors, i.e., technological capability (positive influence on firms' survival) and commercial risk (negative influence on firms' survival). We found that the risk factor surpasses the capability factor, thus the impact of patenting on survival has a negative correlation with firms' survival at the end.
    Date: 2012–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:12036&r=sbm
  6. By: Heli Koski
    Abstract: The importance of data and different sources of knowledge in the development of new services and products, and further in the creation of new markets, has dramatically increased during the past few decades. This empirical study uses data from 531 Finnish firms to explore the determinants of generation of new data-based products and services. The empirical findings emphasize the role of a firm’s absorptive capacity and its ICT competence in data-based innovation. It seems that generally a firm’s external information sources play a more prominent role than internal information sources. Particularly customer involvement in innovation process positively relates to the production of new data-based products and services. The reported empirical findings further indicate that data-based product and service innovation tends to be rather strongly demand-driven.
    Keywords: firm performance, innovation, data-based products and services, ICT
    JEL: D22 L20 O31
    Date: 2012–05–24
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:1272&r=sbm
  7. By: Alessandro Caiani (Department of Economics and Business, University of Pavia)
    Abstract: The paper presents an Agent-Based extension of Nelson-Winter model of schumpeterian competition. The original version did not provide any insight about the direction of firms’ innovative activities and of technological change as a whole. As a result, it lacked an explicit structure governing firms interaction and the shape of externalities. We address these criticisms by taking explicitly into account the structure of technology in use in the industry, that we shape as a directed network of nodes and links: nodes represent technological skills to be learnt by firms looking for ’new combinations’ and links represent their reciprocal interdependencies. The network is created in order to reflect the defining properties of Technological Paradigms and Technological Trajectories, as they emerge by evolutive-neoschumpeterian literature. Firms’ ability to learn technological skills through imitation of competitors generates spillover effects related to the process of diffusion of innovation. The basic model presented here focuses on a particular aspect of schumpeterian competition: the relationship between industry initial concentration and its overall innovative performance and, vice-versa, between innovation process and the evolution of industry structure over time. In this same perspective we also analyze how firms’ interactions and the structure of technology concur in determining the success or failure of an innovative strategy. Finally we argue that the model presented here might constitute a flexible framework worthy of further applications in the study of innovation process and technological progress.
    Date: 2012–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pav:wpaper:176&r=sbm
  8. By: Harhoff, Dietmar; Mueller, Elisabeth; Van Reenen, John
    Abstract: Innovation processes within corporations increasingly tap into international technology sources, yet little is known about the relative contribution of different types of innovation channels. We investigate the effectiveness of different types of international technology sourcing activities using survey information on German companies complemented with information from the European Patent Office. German firms with inventors based in the US disproportionately benefit from R&D knowledge located in the US. The positive influence on total factor productivity is larger if the research of the inventors results in co-applications of patents with US companies. Moreover, research cooperation with American suppliers also enables German firms to better tap into US R&D, but cooperation with customers and competitors does not appear to aid technology sourcing. The results suggest that the brain drain to the US can have upsides for corporations tapping into American know-how. --
    Keywords: technology sourcing,knowledge spillovers,productivity,open innovation
    JEL: O32 O33
    Date: 2012
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fsfmwp:187&r=sbm
  9. By: ITO Keiko; KATO Masatoshi
    Abstract: Using establishment-level data in Japan, we examine the effects of new business entries on the probability of incumbents exiting the market. In particular, we estimate how the effects vary depending on the size of both the entrants and incumbents, which has not been explored in the literature.<br />We find that while new business entries increase the probability that incumbents will exit, the effect differs significantly across sectors and depends on entrant and incumbent size. Although small establishments are the most likely to be driven out by new entries in all sectors, large incumbents are not always the most competitive, and, in the case of the tradable services sector, medium-sized establishments are the least likely to be affected by new entries.<br />Moreover, our simple regression analysis shows a positive relationship between entry rates and employment growth in a region. New entries may promote resource reallocation and stimulate regional economies, possibly resulting in regional employment growth.
    Date: 2012–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:12034&r=sbm
  10. By: César Alonso-Borrego; José I. Galán-Zazo; Francisco Javier Forcadell; José Ángel Zúñiga-Vicente
    Abstract: This survey examines the empirical literature on the relationship between public R&D subsidies and private R&D investment over the past five decades. The survey reveals a considerable heterogeneity of empirical results that cannot be explained fully by methodological issues. We aim to provide further explanations of the possible causes of that heterogeneity. In particular, we emphasise a set of issues that, in our view, are critical to understanding the potential effect of public R&D subsidies on private R&D spending. Special attention is paid to the dynamic aspects and composition of firm R&D, the constraints faced by the firm (such as financial constraints), and the amount and source of public subsidies. None of these issues have been investigated in depth. We formulate a set of research assumptions to guide future empirical research in this field.
    Keywords: Public subsidies, R&D investment, Innovation
    JEL: H54 L22 L52 O31 O38
    Date: 2012–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:we1215&r=sbm

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