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on Innovation |
| By: | Galina Besstremyannaya (Centre for Economic and Financial Research at New Economic School); Richard Dasher (Stanford University); Sergei Golovan (New Economic School) |
| Abstract: | The paper develops a model of growth driven by the acquisition of domestic firms by their peers, treating innovations endogenously. The model builds on microeconomic evidence concerning acquisitions in a technology economy, where the acquirers are innovative firms, which regard acquisitions as a complementary strategy to their R&D investments. The targets are small firms with leading positions on markets for their products. The acquirers are capable of further improving the products of their targets. The model includes the government, which collects corporate profit tax and redistributes it to provide subsidies for innovation and for acquisitions. We quantify the model using 1999-2013 financial data for Japanese firms, matched with patents obtained by the firms in that period. The estimates bear out the model's predictions of positive effect of acquisitions on economic growth. The impact of acquisitions on R&D intensity is negative under the substitutability between innovation and acquisition strategies. The effect of government subsidies to encourage acquisitions is linked to the parameters of the cost function and reflects the association between the cost of acquisitions and of R&D. |
| Keywords: | innovation, endogenous growth, acquisition, social planner, patents |
| JEL: | O11 O38 O40 O53 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abo:neswpt:w0247&r=all |
| By: | Antonio Vezzani (European Commission - JRC); Petros Gkotsis (European Commission - JRC); Hector Hernandez (European Commission - JRC); Pietro Moncada Paterno Castello (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | In many EU countries, a high proportion of local inventions are owned by foreign companies. On the contrary, in few countries the number of patents owned is much higher than the local inventions. Companies from Germany and the US are the most frequent foreign owners of patents invented in EU countries. Concentration of patents across companies changes largely from one country to the other. Differences between local inventions and patent ownership, as well as their concentration within countries matter for Innovation policies aiming at closing the EU gap of knowledge creation and technology diffusion. |
| Keywords: | patents, inventor, ownership, technological innovation, innovation policy, industrial policy |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc116219&r=all |
| By: | Galina Besstremyannaya (CEFIR at New Economic School); Richard Dasher (Stanford University); Sergei Golovan (New Economic School) |
| Abstract: | A considerable amount of research has shown that that carbon tax combined with research subsidy may be regarded as an optimal policy in view of diffusing low carbon technologies for the benefit of the society. The paper exploits the macro economic approach of the endogenous growth models with technological change for a comparative assessment of these policy measures on the economic growth in the US and Japan in the medium and the long run. The results of our micro estimates reveal several important differences across the Japanese and US energy firms: lower elasticity of innovation production function in R&D expenditure, lower probability of a radical innovation, and larger advances of dirty technologies in Japan. This may explain our quantitative findings of stronger reliance on carbon tax than on research subsidies in Japan relative to the US. |
| Keywords: | endogenous growth, technological change, innovation, carbon tax, energy |
| JEL: | O11 O13 O47 Q43 Q49 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abo:neswpt:w0245&r=all |
| By: | Nune Hovhannisyan; Wolfgang Keller |
| Abstract: | Access to new foreign technology is often central to countries’ development strategies. However, we know very little about the quantitative impact of technology sourcing. In this paper, we study the role of outward international business travel for technology sourcing and innovation by examining whether patenting in European regions is affected by the number of business travelers heading to the United States. Using European regional patent data for the years 1996 to 2010 from Eurostat and information on incoming business travelers from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Survey of International Air Travelers, we find that controlling for a region’s R&D spending and size, innovation is increasing in the number of business travelers of the region to the United States. Technology sourcing through in-person business travel is not only statistically but economically significant, accounting, for example, for 20% of the higher patenting in Germany’s Greater Stuttgart area, compared to Portugal’s Algarve region. |
| JEL: | F2 O33 |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25862&r=all |
| By: | Andrea Bastianin; Paolo Castelnovo; Massimo Florio; Anna Giunta |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of Big Science Centres on technological innovation. We exploit a unique dataset with information on CERN's procurement orders to study the collaborative innovation process between CERN and its industrial partners. After a qualitative discussion of case studies, survival and count data models are estimated; the impact of CERN procurement on suppliers' innovation is captured by the number of patent applications. The fact that firms in our sample received their first order over a long time span (1995-2008) delivers a natural partition of industrial partners into "suppliers" and "not yet suppliers". This allows estimating the impact of CERN on the hazard to file a patent for the first time and on the number of patent applications, as well as the time needed for these effects to show up. We find that a "CERN effect" does exist: being an industrial partner of CERN is associated with an increase in the hazard to file a patent for the first time and in the number of patent applications. These effects require a significant "gestation lag" in the range of five to eight years, pointing to a relatively slow process of absorption of new ideas. |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1905.09552&r=all |
| By: | Daron Acemoglu (MIT and CIFAR); Pascual Restrepo (Boston University) |
| Abstract: | We argue theoretically and document empirically that aging leads to greater (industrial) automation, and in particular, to more intensive use and development of robots. Using US data, we document that robots substitute for middle-aged workers (those between the ages of 36 and 55). We then show that demographic change—corresponding to an increasing ratio of older to middle-aged workers—is associated with greater adoption of robots and other automation technologies across countries and with more robotics-related activities across US commuting zones. We also provide evidence of more rapid development of automation technologies in coun- tries undergoing greater demographic change. Our directed technological change model further predicts that the induced adoption of automation technology should be more pronounced in industries that rely more on middle-aged workers and those that present greater opportunities for automation. Both of these predictions receive support from country-industry variation in the adoption of robots. Our model also implies that the productivity implications of aging are ambiguous when technology responds to demographic change, but we should expect produc- tivity to increase and labor share to decline relatively in industries that are most amenable to automation, and this is indeed the pattern we find in the data. |
| Keywords: | aging, automation, demographic change, economic growth, directed technological change, productivity, robots, tasks, technology |
| JEL: | J11 J23 J24 O33 O47 O57 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bos:iedwpr:dp-299&r=all |
| By: | Colin Davis; Ken-ichi Hashimoto |
| Abstract: | In recent years firms have started to offshore their innovation activities to emerging economies. This paper investigates the implications of innovation offshoring for productivity growth in a two-country framework that features a tension between access to technical knowledge and low-cost high-skilled labor in the innovation location decision. Industry and innovation tend to concentrate in the asset-wealthy country when trade costs are relatively high. A positive relationship between innovation costs and industry concentration then ensures that improved international knowledge diffusion coincides with an increase in net offshoring flows in innovation from the asset-wealthy country to the asset-poor country, and potentially with faster productivity growth. |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1055&r=all |
| By: | Nagler, Markus (LMU Munich); Sorg, Stefan (MPI for Innovation and Competition) |
| Abstract: | We study the causal impact of invalidating marginally valid patents during post-grant opposition at the European Patent Office on affected inventors\' subsequent patenting. We exploit exogenous variation in invalidation by leveraging the participation of a patent\'s original examiner in the opposition division as an instrument. We find a disciplinary effect of invalidation: Affected inventors file 20% fewer patent applications in the decade after the decision. This effect is entirely driven by a reduction in low-quality filings, i.e., filings that examiners associate with prior art that threatens the application\'s novelty or inventive step. We do not observe shifts into national patenting. |
| Keywords: | inventors; marginal patents; patent invalidation; patent opposition; postgrant review; epo; innovation; |
| JEL: | O31 O34 |
| Date: | 2019–05–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:155&r=all |
| By: | Carmelina Bevilacqua; Bruno Monardo; Claudia Trillo |
| Abstract: | This report focuses on the case study of the Boston area and allows identifying key success factors in the Boston regional innovation ecosystem. It discusses how the macro-innovation eco-ecosystem is composed by a variety of interconnected micro-innovation eco-systems, mutually reinforcing each other and making the entire “territorial†system successful. The spatial configuration of these micro-innovation ecosystems at the urban scale has been specifically investigated, thus leading to theorize that the Innovation District may act as enabler for place-based innovation. Evidence from the Boston case study shows that there is not a single magic recipe for the successful implementation of place-based and social innovation-driven strategies. On the contrary, the variety of place-grounded combinations of micro and macro initiatives, embedded in the social and spatial fine grain of places and encompassing a diversity of actors, can create the conditions enabling places to thrive and local economic activities to grow in a sustainable way. |
| Keywords: | Place-based, innovation ecosystems, social innovation, innovation districts, US, USA, Boston, S3, Smart Specialisation, territorial system, spatial configuration |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc116173&r=all |
| By: | Douglas L. Campbell (New Economic School (NES)); Karsten Mau (Maastricht University) |
| Abstract: | Bloom, Draca, and Van Reenen (2016) find that Chinese competition induced a rise in patenting, IT adoption, and TFP by 30% of the total increase in Europe in the early 2000s. We find that the average patents per firm fell by 94% for the most Chinacompeting firms in their sample, but also by 94% for non-competing firms (starting from an initially higher level), and that various intuitive controls, such as controls for sectoral trends, renders the impact on patents-per-firm insignificant. We also find that while TFP appears to be positively correlated with the rise in Chinese competition, IV estimates are inconclusive, and other measures of productivity, such as value-added per worker and profits, are not correlated. Various instrumental and proxy variable approaches also do not support a positive impact of the rise of China on European patents. |
| Keywords: | Patents, China, Europe, Textiles, Trade Shocks, Manufacturing |
| JEL: | F14 F13 L25 L60 |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0252&r=all |