nep-sbm New Economics Papers
on Small Business Management
Issue of 2015‒05‒02
nine papers chosen by
João Carlos Correia Leitão
Universidade da Beira Interior

  1. Is innovation activity persistent among small firms in developing countries? Evidence from Vietnam By Trinh, Long
  2. Does Labour Mobility Foster Innovation? Evidence from Sweden By Braunerhjelm, Pontus; Ding, Ding; Thulin, Per
  3. World Corporate Top R&D Investors: Innovation and IP bundles By Hélène Dernis; Mafini Dosso; Fernando Hervas; Valentine Millot; Mariagrazia Squicciarini; Antonio Vezzani
  4. Do Manufacturing Firms Benefit from Services FDI? – Evidence from Six New EU Member States By J. Damijan; C. Kostevc; Philipp Marek; M. Rojec
  5. Age and productivity as determinants of firm survival over the product life cycle By Silviano Esteve Pérez; Fabio Pieri; Diego Rodriguez
  6. Firm-level Productivity Spillovers in China's Chemical Industry: A Spatial Hausman-Taylor Approach By Badi H. Baltagi; Peter H. Egger; Michaela Kesina
  7. Innovation and Collaboration Patterns between Research Establishments By INOUE Hiroyasu; NAKAJIMA Kentaro; SAITO Yukiko
  8. Relative Earnings and Firm Performance: Evidence from Publicly-listed Firms in China, 2005-2012 By Peiwen Bai; Wenli Cheng
  9. The Rise of Female Entrepreneurs: New Evidence on Gender Differences in Liquidity Constraints By Sauer, Robert M.; Wilson, Tanya

  1. By: Trinh, Long
    Abstract: Using firm-level panel data collected in Vietnam bi-annually from 2005 to 2013, this paper examines whether innovation is persistent among small firms in Vietnam. The empirical results obtained from dynamic random effect probit and dynamic random effect ordered probit show that the innovation activity is persistent among these small firms. Our estimation results also show slightly different roles of human capital of firm’s owner and employees in innovation activities. While the owner’s human capital is associated with creating a new product, employees’ human capital is positively correlated with upgrading the existing products or production procedure. However, we do not find evidence on the roles of unobserved heterogeneity in explaining this persistence. Our results are consistent with results found in the literature for firms in developed economies.
    Keywords: Innovation, Persistence of Innovation, Unobserved heterogeneity, Dynamic Random Effect Probit Model, Dynamic Random Effect Ordered Probit Model, Small and Medium Enterprises, Vietnam
    JEL: C23 C25 L20 O31 O33
    Date: 2015–04–14
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:63767&r=sbm
  2. By: Braunerhjelm, Pontus (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Ding, Ding (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Thulin, Per (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology)
    Abstract: By utilising a Swedish unique, matched employer-employee dataset that has been pooled with firm-level patent application data, we provide new evidence that knowledge workers’ mobility has a positive and strongly significant impact on firm innovation output, as measured by firm patent applications. The effect is particularly strong for knowledge workers that have previously worked in a patenting firm (the learning-by-hiring effect), but firms losing a knowledge worker are also shown to benefit (the diaspora effect), albeit more weakly. Finally, the effect is more pronounced when the joining worker originates in another region.
    Keywords: Labour mobility; knowledge diffusion; innovation; social networks
    JEL: J24 O31 R23
    Date: 2015–04–24
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0403&r=sbm
  3. By: Hélène Dernis (OECD); Mafini Dosso (European Commission JRC-IPTS); Fernando Hervas (European Commission JRC-IPTS); Valentine Millot (OECD); Mariagrazia Squicciarini (OECD); Antonio Vezzani (European Commission JRC-IPTS)
    Abstract: This report presents original data and statistics on the innovation output of world top corporate R&D investors. Essentially descriptive in nature, it presents statistics about the technological profiles of companies, their trademark strategies for new products and services and about the extent to which these two forms of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are bundled to protect and appropriate the returns from investment in knowledge-based assets. The report provides interesting insights about the innovation strategies of this sample of world leading corporate R&D investors and opens the door to further research and analysis about companies' global strategies for knowledge development and exploitation. The main target audience of this report is the policy and research communities, as well as analysts with an interest in supporting evidence-based policy making in the area of innovation and industrial policies. This joint EC-OECD report builds on the efforts to collect up-to-date, reliable and comparable company data on the top corporate R&D investors worldwide carried-out by the European Commission since 2004 (the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard publication) and on the solid knowledge and experience of the OECD in developing and providing robust and state of the art indicators on science, technology and industry (see for example OECD's STI Scoreboard publications).
    Keywords: Patent, Trademark, IP bundle, Scoreboard, Top corporate R&D investors
    Date: 2015–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc94932&r=sbm
  4. By: J. Damijan; C. Kostevc; Philipp Marek; M. Rojec
    Abstract: This paper focuses on the effect of foreign presence in the services sector on the productivity growth of downstream customers in the manufacturing sector in six EU new member countries in the course of their accession to the European Union. For this purpose, the analysis combines firm-level information, data on economic structures and annual national input-output tables. The findings suggest that services FDI may enhance productivity of manufacturing firms in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries through vertical forward spillovers, and thereby contribute to their competitiveness. The consideration of firm characteristics shows that the magnitude of spillover effects depends on size, ownership structure, and initial productivity level of downstream firms as well as on the diverging technological intensity across sector on the supply and demand side. The results suggest that services FDI foster productivity of domestic rather than foreign controlled firms in the host economy. For the period between 2003 and 2008, the findings suggest that the increasing share of services provided by foreign affiliates enhanced the productivity growth of domestic firms in manufacturing by 0.16%. Furthermore, the firms’ absorptive capability and the size reduce the spillover effect of services FDI on the productivity of manufacturing firms. A sectoral distinction shows that firms at the end of the value chain experience a larger productivity growth through services FDI, whereas the aggregate positive effect seems to be driven by FDI in energy supply. This does not hold for science-based industries, which are spurred by foreign presence in knowledge-intensive business services.
    Keywords: production, cost, capital, total factor and multifactor productivity, capacity; economic integration
    JEL: D24 F15
    Date: 2015–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iwh:dispap:5-15&r=sbm
  5. By: Silviano Esteve Pérez (Department of Applied Economics II, Universitat de València); Fabio Pieri (Department of Applied Economics, Universitat de València); Diego Rodriguez (Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
    Abstract: This paper contributes to fill the gap between the literature on the determinants of firm survival and the theoretical and empirical works on the product life cycle (PLC). Using a representative sample of Spanish manufacturing firms with ten or more employees over the period 1991-2010, we empirically analyze the role played by firm age and productivity on firm survival across three different phases of the PLC to which firms are allocated according to firm- and product-level haracteristics. Firm age results to be negatively and significantly correlated with hazard rates mostly in the ‘young’ phase of the PLC, pointing out the role of ‘learning processes’ in this phase, while firm productivity is associated with lower hazard rates only in the ‘old’ phase of the PLC when market competition is primarily efficiency-driven. Our results qualify the roles of age and productivity as determinants of firm survival.
    Keywords: Product life cycle; firm survival; Spanish manufacturing firms; discrete time survival methods
    JEL: C41 L10 L60
    Date: 2015–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eec:wpaper:1502&r=sbm
  6. By: Badi H. Baltagi (Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244); Peter H. Egger (ETH Zurich); Michaela Kesina (ETH Zurich)
    Abstract: This paper assesses the role of intra-sectoral spillovers in total factor productivity across Chinese producers in the chemical industry. We use a rich panel data-set of 12,552 firms observed over the period 2004-2006 and model output by the firm as a function of skilled and unskilled labor, capital, materials, and total factor productivity, which is broadly defined. The latter is a composite of observable factors such as export market participation, foreign as well as public ownership, the extent of accumulated intangible assets, and unobservable total factor productivity. Despite the richness of our data-set, it suffers from the lack of time variation in the number of skilled workers as well as in the variable indicating public ownership. We introduce spatial spillovers in total factor productivity through contextual effects of observable variables as well as spatial dependence of the disturbances. We extend the Hausman and Taylor (1981) estimator to account for spatial correlation in the error term. This approach permits estimating the effect of time-invariant variables which are wiped out by the fixed effects estimator. While the original Hausman and Taylor (1981) estimator assumes homoskedastic error components, we provide spatial variants that allow for both homoskedasticity and heteroskedasticity. Monte Carlo results show, that our estimation procedure performs well in small samples. We find evidence of positive spillovers across chemical manufacturers and a large and significant detrimental effect of public ownership on total factor productivity.
    Keywords: Technology Spillovers, Spatial econometrics, Panel data econometrics, Firm-level productivity, Chinese firms
    JEL: C23 C31 D24 L65
    Date: 2014–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:max:cprwps:175&r=sbm
  7. By: INOUE Hiroyasu; NAKAJIMA Kentaro; SAITO Yukiko
    Abstract: This study empirically investigates the determinants of the productivity of knowledge creation by collaboration. By using the Japanese patent database, we extracted establishment-level patent co-invention information and found the following results. First, we find an inverse U-shaped pattern in the relationship between the similarity of knowledge stocks and the quality of patents. That is, moderate diversity in knowledge stocks between establishments rather than extreme similarity or extreme diversity is important for knowledge creation. Second, focusing on the differences in technology class, we find an inverse U-shaped pattern except in the lowest technologies, and the peak of the inverse U-shape is larger in the higher technologies. This implies that the common knowledge between establishments is important in the higher technologies. Third, we find that the physical distance between collaborating establishments has a negative effect on the quality of patents.
    Date: 2015–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:15049&r=sbm
  8. By: Peiwen Bai; Wenli Cheng
    Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between three measures of relative earnings and firm performance based on data of 664 listed manufacturing companies in China over the period 2005-2012. It finds that (1) capital earnings relative to labor earnings and the overall average wage level relative to a firm’s average wage level had negative effects on firm performance; (2) the earnings of high-level managers relative to ordinary workers had a positive impact on firm performance; and (3) the effects of relative earnings on firm performance differed across regions, industry characteristics, and firm ownership structures, and over different time periods.
    Keywords: relative income share of capital and labor, relative earnings of management and workers, relative wage, firm performance in China
    JEL: D24 J31
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:2014-51&r=sbm
  9. By: Sauer, Robert M. (Royal Holloway, University of London); Wilson, Tanya (Royal Holloway, University of London)
    Abstract: Small business activity and female entrepreneurship have become increasingly important features of the UK economy since the start of the Great Recession. In this paper, we re-examine the impact of liquidity constraints on new business formation in an instrumental variables framework, using a previously unexplored data set from the UK. The new results indicate that it is primarily single women that drive the well-established empirical relationship between personal wealth and business start-ups. Therefore, public policies specifically targeted at relieving the liquidity constraints of women could help further accelerate the rise of female entrepreneurship.
    Keywords: entrepreneurship, liquidity constraints
    JEL: J23 L26 M13
    Date: 2015–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8981&r=sbm

This nep-sbm issue is ©2015 by João Carlos Correia Leitão. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
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