nep-ino New Economics Papers
on Innovation
Issue of 2022‒10‒17
fifteen papers chosen by
Uwe Cantner
University of Jena

  1. Do not neglect the periphery?! - the emergence and diffusion of radical innovations By Dirk Fornahl; Nils Grashof; Alexander Kopka
  2. Characterising science-industry patent collaborations: knowledge base, impact and economic value By Ugo RIZZO; Valerio STERZI
  3. The emergence of a Global Innovation System: an inter-temporal analysis through a network of networks By Leonardo Costa Ribeiro; Jorge Nogueira de Paiva Britto; Eduardo da Motta e Albuquerque
  4. A Lasting Crisis Affects R&D Decisions of Smaller Firms: The Greek Experience By Ioannis Giotopoulos; Alexander S. Kritikos; Aggelos Tsakanikas
  5. Patenting Inventions or Inventing Patents? Continuation Practice at the USPTO By Cesare Righi; Timothy Simcoe
  6. On the way from invention to innovation: the role of applicant and inventor team characteristics By Mariia Shkolnykova
  7. Platform Liability and Innovation By Doh-Shin Jeon; Yassine Lefouili; Leonardo Madio
  8. Comprehensive Patent Data of the German Democratic Republic 1949-1990 — technical report and dataset overview By Ann Hipp; Michael Fritsch; Maria Greve; Jutta Günther; Marcel Lange; Christian Liutik; Beate Pfeifer; Mariia Shkolnykova; Michael Wyrwich
  9. Fostering the Diffusion of General Purpose Technologies: Evidence from the Licensing of the Transistor Patents By Nagler, Markus; Schnitzer, Monika; Watzinger, Martin
  10. The Impact of Public Procurement on Financial Barriers to Green Innovation: Evidence from European Community Innovation Survey By Dorothea Schäfer; Andreas Stephan; Sören Fuhrmeister
  11. Artificial Intelligence, Surveillance, and Big Data By David Karpa; Torben Klarl; Michael Rochlitz
  12. A question of regulation or motivation? Environmental innovation activities in transition economies By Katharina Friz
  13. Green Technologies, Environmental Policy and Regional Growth By Philip Kerner; Torben Klarl; Tobias Wendler
  14. Using Topic Modeling in Innovation Studies: The Case of a Small Innovation System under Conditions of Pandemic Related Change By Jessica Birkholz; Jutta Günther; Mariia Shkolnykova
  15. Radical technologies, recombinant novelty and productivity growth: a cliometric approach By Marianna Epicoco; Magali Jaoul-Grammare; Anne Plunket

  1. By: Dirk Fornahl; Nils Grashof; Alexander Kopka
    Abstract: While innovations have been acknowledged as a key factor for economic growth, it appears that they are unique features of central actors. Recently, especially the outstanding opportunities arising from rather radical innovations have been highlighted. These kinds of innovations combine knowledge pieces that have not been combined before and consequently create something radically new. While the influence of firms' network position on innovativeness in general has already been investigated, it remains to be researched in the context of radical innovations. We address this research gap by empirically investigating the influence of firms' network position on the emergence and diffusion patterns of radical innovations. By analysing a unique dataset evidence is found that central firms are essential drivers of the emergence and diffusion of radical innovations. However, the results also indicate that under certain conditions (e.g. high knowledge diversity) also peripheral firms can contribute to the emergence of radical innovations.
    Keywords: Radical innovations, emergence, diffusion, core-periphery, firm-level
    JEL: O31 O33 R11
    Date: 2021–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:atv:wpaper:2102&r=
  2. By: Ugo RIZZO; Valerio STERZI
    Abstract: In this article, we analyse the characteristics of science-industry patents with respect to non-collaborative industry patents and industry-industry collaborative patents. This analysis covers patents filed in the years 1978-2015 (and granted up to 2020) at the European Patent Office (EPO) in four large European countries (Germany, France, Italy and the UK) and in the US. We consider three dimensions to assess the characteristics of patents: the knowledge base, the technological impact, and the economic value. Science-industry collaborative patents are averagely more sophisticated and similar or higher impact than other industry patents. However, depending on the proxy chosen, they are of similar or lower economic value compared to non-collaborative industry patents and to industry-industry collaborative patents. When we control for the experience of private companies in collaborating with academic institutions, we observe that more experienced collaborations produce slightly less sophisticated and impactful patents, but with higher economic value. We discuss different explanations of these findings.
    Keywords: University patent, patent value, patent collaboration, Science-Industry
    JEL: O31 O34
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:bdxewp:2022-15&r=
  3. By: Leonardo Costa Ribeiro (CEDEPLAR/UFMG); Jorge Nogueira de Paiva Britto (UFF); Eduardo da Motta e Albuquerque (CEDEPLAR/UFMG)
    Abstract: This paper investigates a structural change: the emergence of a Global Innovation System (GIS). Focusing on international knowledge flows (IKFs) we organize the network in three layers according to the type of IKF that connects the institutions: scientific collaboration, patent citation or article citation in patents. We investigate how those three layers overlap and entangle, figuring out a network of networks. We found that each layer follows a free-scale network structure associated with a self-organized system and creates an intrinsic hierarchy. The subnetwork that connects the three layers is also a free-scale network. The intertemporal analysis shows that those properties persist from 2009 to 2017.Therefore, we identified a complex network structure that is very unlike being created by a random process. This structure shows hierarchy, association with self-organized systems, robustness, and specialization, which are the fundamental aspects necessary to define a system. In the context of this analysis, that is the Global Innovation System.
    Keywords: International knowledge flows; Innovation systems; Networks of networks
    JEL: O32 O34 O39
    Date: 2022–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td645&r=
  4. By: Ioannis Giotopoulos; Alexander S. Kritikos; Aggelos Tsakanikas
    Abstract: We use the prolonged Greek crisis as a case study to understand how a lasting economic shock affects the innovation strategies of firms in economies with moderate innovation activities. Adopting the 3-stage CDM model, we explore the link between R&D, innovation, and productivity for different size groups of Greek manufacturing firms during the prolonged crisis. At the first stage, we find that the continuation of the crisis is harmful for the R&D engagement of smaller firms while it increased the willingness for R&D activities among the larger ones. At the second stage, among smaller firms the knowledge production remains unaffected by R&D investments, while among larger firms the R&D decision is positively correlated with the probability of producing innovation, albeit the relationship is weakened as the crisis continues. At the third stage, innovation output benefits only larger firms in terms of labor productivity, while the innovation-productivity nexus is insignificant for smaller firms during the lasting crisis.
    Keywords: Small firms, large firms, R&D, innovation, productivity, long-term crisis
    JEL: L25 L60 O31 O33
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2009&r=
  5. By: Cesare Righi; Timothy Simcoe
    Abstract: Continuations allow inventors to add new claims to old patents, leading to concerns about inadvertent infringement and holdup. We study the use of continuations to obtain standard essential patents (SEPs), a setting where patents are easily linked to possibly infringing technology. Continuation filings increase after standard publication. This effect is larger when patent examiners are more lenient, and for applicants with licensing-based business models. Claims of SEPs also become more similar after standard publication, and late claiming is positively correlated with litigation. Our findings suggest widespread use of continuations to \invent patents" that are infringed by already-published standards.
    Keywords: patents, standards, standard essential patents, continuations
    JEL: K11 L15 O34 O38
    Date: 2022–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1320&r=
  6. By: Mariia Shkolnykova
    Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of applicant and inventor team composition on patent commercialization in form of product creation. It outlines the importance of applicant and inventor team characteristics, i.e. specifically, size and internationality, on the speed of market authorization of a patent-related product and on the product quality. The analysis is performed for the European pharmaceutical industry. The product data is taken from the European Medicines Agency website for the period 2010-2019. Manual patent-product concordance is established with the help of the Pat-INFORMED database from the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Health Canada database. The created dataset presents combined data on patent and product characteristics. Results from an accelerated failure time model show that larger applicant teams as well as the presence of international applicants and inventors decelerate the market authorization of patent-related products. Results of the probit analysis show that larger inventor teams lead to patents of higher quality.
    Keywords: Patent, commercialization, pharmaceutical industry, survival analysis, probit regression
    JEL: O31 O34 L65
    Date: 2021–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:atv:wpaper:2110&r=
  7. By: Doh-Shin Jeon (Toulouse School of Economics, University of Toulouse Capitole and CEPR); Yassine Lefouili (Toulouse School of Economics, University of Toulouse Capitole); Leonardo Madio (Department of economics and management †Marco Fanno†, University of Padova and CESifo)
    Abstract: We study a platformâs incentives to delist IP-infringing products and the effects of holding the platform liable for the presence of such products on innovation and consumer welfare. For a given number of buyers, platform liability increases innovation by reducing the competitive pressure faced by innovative products. However, there can be a misalignment of interests between innovators and buyers. Furthermore, platform liability can have unintended consequences, which overturn the intended effect on innovation. Platform liability tends to increase (decrease) innovation and consumer welfare when the elasticity of participation of innovators is high (low) and that of buyers is low (high).
    Keywords: platform, liability, intellectual property, innovation
    JEL: K40 K42 K13 L13 L22 L86
    Date: 2022–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pad:wpaper:0285&r=
  8. By: Ann Hipp (University of Bremen, Germany); Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany); Maria Greve (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, and University of Groningen, The Netherlands); Jutta Günther (University of Bremen, Germany); Marcel Lange (University of Bremen, Germany); Christian Liutik (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany); Beate Pfeifer (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany); Mariia Shkolnykova (University of Bremen, Germany); Michael Wyrwich (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, and University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
    Abstract: This paper documents the generation and the content of the Comprehensive Patent Database (CPDB) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949-1990), Version 1.1, which is freely available at GESIS https://doi.org/10.7802/2423. The database contains all patents granted in the GDR and published by the Office of Inventions and Patents (AfEP, later: German Patent and Trade Mark Office/DPMA) in the period between 1 January 1939 (application before but granted in the GDR) and 29 June 2006 (application in but granted after the GDR). The core database covers the years 1950 to 1990 and contains 24 variables with manually cleaned and processed information on a total of 261,822 unique patents of the GDR. The data was collected and prepared for the purpose of research on innovation activity in the GDR.
    Keywords: Patent data, German Democratic Republic (GDR), invention
    JEL: O31 O33 P29 P39 B24
    Date: 2022–09–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2022-011&r=
  9. By: Nagler, Markus (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, CESifo and LASER); Schnitzer, Monika (LMU Munich, CESifo and CEPR); Watzinger, Martin (University of Muenster, CESifo and CEPR)
    Abstract: How do licensing and technology transfer influence the spread of General Purpose Technologies? To answer this question, we analyze the diffusion of the transistor, one of the most important technologies of our time. We show that the transistor diffusion and cross-technology spillovers increased dramatically after AT&T began licensing its transistor patents along with symposia to educate follow-on inventors in 1952. Both these symposia and the licensing of the patents itself played important roles in the diffusion. A subsequent reduction in royalties did not lead to further increases, suggesting that licensing and technology transfer were more important than specific royalty rates.
    Date: 2021–11–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:297&r=
  10. By: Dorothea Schäfer; Andreas Stephan; Sören Fuhrmeister
    Abstract: The purpose of this study is to identify whether an innovative company’s likelihood of facing financial constraints is different when the company possesses a public procurement contract (PP). Theory suggests that the treatment effects of public procurement, particularly when mediated by the demand-pull effect, may lower a company’s funding constraints for innovation. We test this theory and apply extended probit models (eprobit) with treatment and selection to control for an omitted variable bias. Our findings indicate that the treatment effect of PP on the likelihood of facing financial constraints is highly significant and positive. The increased prefunding requirements that usually come along with PP may actually overcompensate the possibly constraint-reducing effects from a demand-pull or certification effect of PP. The treatment effect of PP is particularly strong for internal financial constraints backing the notion, that PP increases the need for upfront funding.
    Keywords: Public procurement, green public procurement, financial constraints, green innovation, sustainable finance, small and medium-sized enterprises
    JEL: G30 O16 O31 Q56
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2014&r=
  11. By: David Karpa; Torben Klarl; Michael Rochlitz
    Abstract: The most important resource to improve technologies in the field of artificial intelligence is data. Two types of policies are crucial in this respect: privacy and data-sharing regulations, and the use of surveillance technologies for policing. Both types of policies vary substantially across countries and political regimes. In this paper, we examine how authoritarian and democratic political institutions can influence the quality of research in artificial intelligence, and the availability of large-scale datasets to improve and train deep learning algorithms. We focus mainly on the Chinese case, and find that - ceteris paribus - authoritarian political institutions continue to have a negative effect on innovation. They can, however, have a positive effect on research in deep learning, via the availability of large-scale datasets that have been obtained through government surveillance. We propose a research agenda to study which of the two effects might dominate in a race for leadership in artificial intelligence between countries with different political institutions, such as the United States and China.
    Keywords: Artificial intelligence, political institutions, big data, surveillance, innovation, China
    JEL: O25 O31 O38 P16 P51
    Date: 2021–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:atv:wpaper:2108&r=
  12. By: Katharina Friz
    Abstract: Environmental innovation (EI) plays an important role in decoupling economic growth and environmental harm. This paper focuses on the environmental innovation behavior of companies in transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which have been little studied so far. These countries share the Soviet legacy of environmental mismanagement, and have restructured their innovation systems relatively recently in the course of transition. The EBRD-EIB-WB Enterprise Survey (2018-2020) allows us to examine the determinants of environmental innovation in 29 transition countries. Although the theory places a greater emphasis on external sources of knowledge in EI, the results indicate that collaborative R&D is still quite weak in these countries. Moreover, environmental regulation increases the likelihood of adopting energy efficiency measures, while customers demanding environmental standards increase the likelihood across all innovation activities, indicating an increasing sustainability awareness among consumers.
    Keywords: Environmental innovation, transition economies, firm-level data, logit model
    JEL: O12 O31 O32 O5 Q55
    Date: 2021–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:atv:wpaper:2107&r=
  13. By: Philip Kerner; Torben Klarl; Tobias Wendler
    Abstract: Green technologies are at the very core of endeavors to combine economic and environmental targets to achieve sustainable growth. In this article, we aim to determine the impact of green technology development on total factor productivity of European regions. Our paper contributes to the literature on technological change and regional growth in various ways. i) Our paper is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to assess the specific role of green technologies for regional growth on a broad empirical base. ii) We advance methodologically on the pertinent literature by explicitly accounting for cross-sectional dependence in our empirical approach. iii) By providing a simple theoretical framework, we directly link our results to implications of environmental policies for capital accumulation and composition dynamics, contributing to the ongoing debate revolving around the strong version of the Porter hypothesis. Our results, based on a sample of 270 European NUTS-2 regions over 25 years, imply that general technology development is mostly associated with positive economic returns, but our data is not supportive of positive economic returns to green technologies.
    Keywords: Regional Growth, Green Technologies, Environmental Policy, Cross-Sectional Dependence
    JEL: C23 O0 O33
    Date: 2021–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:atv:wpaper:2104&r=
  14. By: Jessica Birkholz; Jutta Günther; Mariia Shkolnykova
    Abstract: It is a challenge to empirically investigate rapidly developing situations. An economic crisis is such a situation in which firms exit, enter, and create new business models. The current pandemic has caused a turbulent situation with hardship, but at the same time with creative potential of innovative change. It calls for empirical analyses, but firm level data based on surveys is hard to collect given the high speed of developments. An alternative data source are news articles reporting on innovation issues and assessed by text mining techniques. This is exemplified in this chapter. It shows how topic modeling can be used to scrutinize the shift of innovation topics since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. The results apply to a small innovation system in Germany and confirm that innovation priorities change during a crisis and that many different actors are involved.
    Keywords: Topic modeling, innovation, structural change, crisis
    JEL: O30 R11 R58
    Date: 2021–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:atv:wpaper:2101&r=
  15. By: Marianna Epicoco (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Magali Jaoul-Grammare (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Anne Plunket (RITM - Réseaux Innovation Territoires et Mondialisation - Université Paris-Saclay)
    Abstract: Using inventions with a high degree of recombinant novelty as proxy for radical technologies, this work provides a long-run quantitative analysis of the relationship between radical technologies and productivity growth. The empirical analysis is based on a cliometric approach and relies on Granger's causality to test the sign and direction of causality between the flow of radical technologies and productivity levels, in the USA between 1920 and 2000. At the aggregate level, results show that radical technologies cause a temporary acceleration of productivity growth and explain a considerable part of productivity variations. At technology-field level, the analysis indicates that productivity growth is driven by a few technological fields, mainly concentrated in science based sectors and in the sectors of specialized suppliers of capital equipment. Finally, with respect to the controversial issue of the endogeneity of radical technologies, at the aggregate level we find no causal relationship running from productivity to radical technologies, suggesting that these are exogenous. However, at technology-field level, we find a few endogenous technologies. Most of these are "demand-driven" as their flow increases when productivity grows, but they have no impact on productivity. Only in one technological field, the flow of radical technologies increases when productivity decreases and, at the same time, has a positive impact on productivity. This latter case may explain why technological revolutions and the whole process of longrun economic development are partly endogenous.
    Keywords: Radical technologies,Recombinant novelty,Productivity growth,Cliometrics,Granger's causality,Technological revolutions,Long-run economic development.
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03765637&r=

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