nep-ino New Economics Papers
on Innovation
Issue of 2021‒10‒04
nine papers chosen by
Uwe Cantner
University of Jena

  1. Information leakage, imitation, and the patent system By Czarnitzki, Dirk; van Criekingen, Kristof
  2. Collaborative Innovation Blocs and Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy: An Ecosystem Perspective By Elert, Niklas; Henrekson, Magnus
  3. The Impact of Venture Capital Expenditures on Innovation in Europe By Leogrande, Angelo; Costantiello, Alberto; Laureti, Lucio
  4. Exploring the Antibiotics Innovation System and R&D policies in China: Mission Oriented Innovation? By Yuhan Bao; Adrian Ely; Michael M. Hopkins; Xianzhe Li; Yangmu Huang
  5. Intended and unintended effects of public incentives for innovation. Quasi-experimental evidence from Italy By Giovanni Mellace; Marco Ventura
  6. Regional technological capabilities and Green opportunities in Europe By Nicolo Barbieri; Davide Consoli; Lorenzo Napolitano; Francois Perruchas; Emanuele Pugliese; Angelica Sbardella
  7. The tradeoffs of brokerage in innovation networks: a study of Latin American cities By Carlos Bianchi; Pablo Galaso; Sergio Palomeque
  8. Does green public procurement trigger environmental innovations? By Krieger, Bastian; Zipperer, Vera
  9. How do workers adjust when firms adopt new technologies? By Genz, Sabrina; Gregory, Terry; Janser, Markus; Lehmer, Florian; Matthes, Britta

  1. By: Czarnitzki, Dirk; van Criekingen, Kristof
    Abstract: From a firm's perspective two competing forces are driving the decision to invest in innovation. On the one hand, innovative performance is an important driver of profitability and growth. On the other hand, investments in innovation suffer from negative externalities, i.e. spillovers to other firms, and hence imitation could be induced. To preempt imitation firms may protect their inventions by means of intellectual property rights, such as patents. By taking out a patent, however, a firm also conveys information about the functioning of the invention to competitors. In this empirical paper, we highlight the trade-off of patenting by setting up a recursive system of equations on knowledge leakage and imitation that, among other factors, may be partly determined by firms' patenting activity. Thereby we contribute to the debate on the functioning of the contemporary patent system. We find that patenting firms are being less confronted with imitation. The effect of patents on the dissemination of R&D findings is, however, insignificant. Therefore, we conclude that patent disclosures do not significantly harm the appropriability conditions for inventions, but help to protect, at least partly, against imitation, as it has been originally envisaged by policy.
    Keywords: Innovation,R&D,Imitation,Dissemination,Patents
    JEL: O31 O33 O34 O38
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:21072&r=
  2. By: Elert, Niklas (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)); Henrekson, Magnus (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))
    Abstract: Among contemporary economists, Mariana Mazzucato stands out for her emphasis on the importance of innovation to solve pressing challenges and achieve a greater quality of life. However, the type of mission-oriented innovation policies she promotes usually rely on an overly mechanical view of innovation and economic growth. We employ an ecosystem perspective to demonstrate that innovative entrepreneurship takes place in a collaborative innovation bloc consisting of a myriad of nodes. Entrepreneurs, inventors, early- and later-stage financiers, key personnel, and customers are all actors whose skills and abilities are necessary to realize an entrepreneurial project. When mission-oriented policies play a large role in an industry’s production or financing, connections between actors in the innovation bloc risk being severed, severely curtailing the scope for actors to play their requisite roles. Thus, there is a risk that such policies do more harm than good for innovation and economic growth.
    Keywords: Entrepreneurial ecosystems; Collaboration; Entrepreneurship policy; Institutions; Innovation policy
    JEL: D20 G32 L23 L26 O33 O38
    Date: 2021–09–22
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1406&r=
  3. By: Leogrande, Angelo; Costantiello, Alberto; Laureti, Lucio
    Abstract: We investigate the relationship between “Venture Capital Expenditures” and innovation in Europe. Data are collected from the European Innovation Scoreboard for 36 countries in the period 2010-2019. We perform Panel Data with Fixed Effects, Panel Data with Random Effects, Pooled OLS, WLS, Dynamic Panel. Results show that the level of Venture Capitalist Expenditure is positively associated to “Foreign Doctorate Students” and “Innovation Index” and negatively related to “Government Procurement of Advanced Technology Products”, “Innovators”, “Medium and High-Tech Products Exports”, “Public-Private Co-Publications”. In adjunct, cluster analysis is realized with the algorithm k-Means and the Silhouette coefficient, and we found the presence of four different clusters for the level of “Venture Capital Expenditures”. Finally, we propose a confrontation among 8 different algorithms of machine learning to predict the level of “Venture Capital Expenditures” and we find that the linear regression generates the best results in terms of minimization of MAE, MSE, RMSE.
    Keywords: Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives, Management of Technological Innovation and R&D, Technological Change: Choices and Consequences, Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital, Open Innovation, Government Policy.
    JEL: O30 O31 O32 O33 O34 O38 O39
    Date: 2021–09–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:109897&r=
  4. By: Yuhan Bao (School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University. China); Adrian Ely (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School, Falmer, Brighton, UK); Michael M. Hopkins (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School, Falmer, Brighton, UK); Xianzhe Li (School of Public Health, Peking University, China); Yangmu Huang (School of Public Health, Peking University, China)
    Abstract: One possible response to the growing problem of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in pathogenic infections is the development of new types of antibiotics. However, the pharmaceutical companies that have traditionally led such innovation face a lack of incentives at the present time due to high levels of market uncertainty and low expected returns. Mission oriented innovation with coordinated investment and market-shaping policies may offer an approach to accelerating antibiotic innovation. This paper aims to evaluate whether preCovid-19 Chinese policies concerning AMR can be seen as constituting a mission-oriented approach and whether these policies have influenced antibiotics innovation in China. It adopts a mixed method approach to deliver several insights. By using historical event analysis based on data collected from interviews, public and commercial databases as well as policy documents, the paper finds that China’s recent actions concerning AMR since 2008 comprise many elements of mission-oriented innovation policy. The National Action Plan to Contain AMR has provided a clear mission since 2016 to tackle the problem of AMR and provides the opportunity to coordinate and integrate these policies into a more coherent and evolving mission-oriented innovation approach. Analysis of relevant research grants and publications suggest that these policies (including the 2016 National Action Plan) have drawn the scientific community towards antibiotics research and provided more support to this area. Case studies following the development of new antibiotics are used to illustrate how the established elements of mission oriented innovation policy have or have not contributed to antibiotics innovation in China. Further research is required to more comprehensively analyse R&D investments, and to understand the effects of recent policies, especially after 2016.
    Keywords: Antimicrobial Resistance, mission-oriented innovation, National S&T major research project, market shaping policy
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sru:ssewps:2021-04&r=
  5. By: Giovanni Mellace; Marco Ventura
    Abstract: Italy introduced a policy to incentivize young innovative start-up firms in 2012. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) we estimate its causal effects on the firms' share of intangible assets, turnover, number of employees, and number of partners. Our results indicate that after two years the policy was effective in increasing the number of partners, but we do not find any significant effects on innovation, at least in the short run. We provide strong evidence that the new investors might have been attracted by the tax benefit but had little interest in innovation.
    Keywords: Policy evaluation; Regression discontinuity design; Incentives to innovations
    JEL: H32 L52 C21 O31
    Date: 2021–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sap:wpaper:wp199&r=
  6. By: Nicolo Barbieri; Davide Consoli; Lorenzo Napolitano; Francois Perruchas; Emanuele Pugliese; Angelica Sbardella
    Abstract: The goal of the paper is to elaborate an empirical overview of green technological development in European regions. This is a timely pursuit considering the ambitious commitments stipulated in the recent European Green Deal to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Our analysis is organised in three steps. First, we map the geographical distribution of innovative activities in Europe and profile regions in terms of technological capabilities. Second, we elaborate a metric to identify regions' green innovation potential. Third, we check whether possessing comparative advantage in specific technological domains is associated with a region's capacity to develop green technologies.
    Keywords: Green Technology; European regions; Economic Fitness and Complexity.
    Date: 2021–09–22
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2021/31&r=
  7. By: Carlos Bianchi (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Pablo Galaso (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Sergio Palomeque (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía)
    Abstract: Brokers play a critical role in the evolution of innovation systems. However, accessing and diffusing knowledge into the system imply costs and requires capacities. Using patent data to analyze inter-city networks in Latin America, we revisit the debate on the benefits and costs of knowledge networks. We identify broker cities, differentiating between intra-regional and extra-regional connections, and we estimate the effects of brokerage on patenting outcomes between 2006 and 2017. Our findings reveal that cities holding a central position in the network show higher patenting activity; however, being broker, particularly bridging Latin America with extra-regional cities, negatively influences patenting outcomes.
    Keywords: inter-city networks, patents, brokerage, innovation systems, Latin America.
    JEL: O31 O54 P48
    Date: 2021–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-21-21&r=
  8. By: Krieger, Bastian; Zipperer, Vera
    Abstract: Green public procurement has gained high political priority and is argued to be an effective demand-side policy to trigger environmental innovations. Its implementation usually takes the form of environmental award selection criteria in public procurement tenders. However, there is no direct or broad empirical evidence on its innovation impact. There are even doubts about its effectiveness as an innovation policy tool, as it does not require innovations as part of its contracts and might only influence the selection of awardees in public procurement tenders. We construct a novel firm-level dataset to investigate the effect of winning green public procurement awards on firms' introduction of environmental innovations. Employing cross-sectional difference-in-differences methods, we find that winning green public procurement awards increases a firm's probability of introducing more environmentally friendly products on average by 20 percentage points. We show that this effect is driven by small and medium-sized firms and is not significant for larger firms. There is no significant effect on the introduction of more environmentally friendly processes.
    Keywords: Green Public Procurement,Environmental Innovation,Demand Pull
    JEL: H57 O38 Q55 Q58
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:21071&r=
  9. By: Genz, Sabrina; Gregory, Terry; Janser, Markus; Lehmer, Florian; Matthes, Britta
    Abstract: We investigate how workers adjust to firms' investments into new digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, augmented reality, or 3D printing. For this, we collected novel data that links survey information on firms' technology adoption to administrative social security data. We then compare individual outcomes between workers employed at technology adopters relative to non-adopters. Depending on the type of technology, we find evidence for improved employment stability, higher wage growth, and increased cumulative earnings in response to digital technology adoption. These beneficial adjustments seem to be driven by technologies used by service providers rather than manufacturers. However, the adjustments do not occur equally across worker groups: IT-related expert jobs with non-routine analytic tasks benefit most from technological upgrading, coinciding with highly complex job requirements, but not necessarily with more academic skills.
    Keywords: technological change,artificial intelligence,employment stability,wages
    JEL: J23 J31 J62
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:21073&r=

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