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on Innovation |
| By: | Serenella Caravella; Giovanni Cerulli; Francesco Crespi; Eleonora Pierucci |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the growth-enhancing effect of different types of innovative activities, i.e., standard-innovation and eco-innovation by focusing on the potential role of exports in mediating the innovation-growth nexus. The empirical study is carried out on a representative sample of Italian firms built by integrating data from the Italian CIS-Community Innovation Survey with the ASIA-FRAME database of the Italian National Statistical Office (ISTAT), which reports information on export values and employment dynamics. The econometric analysis applies Structural Equations Models (SEM) and a two-step counterfactual analysis. Results show that export activities, spurred by engagement in innovation efforts, represent a powerful transmission channel through which innovation displays its effect on firms’ growth. Moreover, results highlight the existence of some heterogeneity in the capacity of different types of innovation activities, i.e., standard-innovation and eco-innovation to leverage the export channel to foster firms’ growth. In particular, the empirical evidence has identified a stronger indirect export-mediated impact for Efficiency-improving (EFI) than for Pollutionreducing (PR) Eco-innovation. |
| Keywords: | Eco-innovation, Export-mediated effect, Innovation-growth nexus |
| JEL: | Q52 Q55 L25 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtr:wpaper:0282&r=ino |
| By: | Paolo Buonanno; Francesco Cinnirella; Elona Harka; Marcello Puca |
| Abstract: | Access to useful knowledge is crucial for fostering modern economic growth. We show, for the first time, that knowledge accumulated and stored in monasteries was useful for innovation. In 1866, anticlerical legislation in Italy led to the suppression of religious orders, the expropriation of their properties, and the transfer of their manuscripts to local public libraries. From a contemporary survey on public libraries, we construct a unique dataset on municipalities which received monastic volumes. This information is then linked to newly digitized annual data on patents issued in Italy between 1863 and 1883. Difference-in-differences estimates show that municipalities exposed to an influx of monastic manuscripts experienced a significant increase in innovation. The effect is driven by the increase in the number of manuscripts in previously existing libraries. We show that the innovation advantage also persisted in the long run and had no impact on human capital. |
| Keywords: | books, manuscripts, knowledge, religion, monastery, libraries, patents |
| JEL: | N33 O30 Z12 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11015&r=ino |
| By: | Roger Masclans-Armengol; Sharique Hasan; Wesley M. Cohen |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a large language model to develop an ex-ante measure of the commercial potential of scientific findings. In addition to validating the measure against the typical holdout sample, we validate it externally against 1.) the progression of scientific findings through a major university’s technology transfer process and 2.) firms’ use of the academic science of major American research universities. We then illustrate the measure’s utility by applying it to two questions. First, does the patenting of academic research by universities impede its breadth of use by firms? Second, to illustrate how this measure can advance our understanding of the determinants of firms’ use of science generally, we use it to analyze how one factor, universities’ reputations for generating commercializable science, impacts firms’ use of academic science. For the former question, using our measure to control for commercializable science, we find that patenting does not dampen the dissemination of academic science in industry. For the second, we find that reputation per se, apart from the production of commercializable science, impacts industry’s use of science, especially for that science with high commercial potential, implying that the commercializable science of less prominent universities is disproportionately overlooked by industry. |
| JEL: | O3 O30 O31 O32 O33 O34 O35 O36 O38 O39 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32262&r=ino |
| By: | Mella-Barral, P.; Sabourian, H. |
| Abstract: | Firms can voluntarily create independent firms to implement their technologically distant innovations and capture their value through capital markets. We argue that when firms repeatedly compete to make innovations, there is inefficient external implementation of innovations and “excessive†creation of such firms. This inefficiency is most exacerbated in the early stages of an industry, when the number of firms is still limited. |
| Keywords: | Repeated Innovations, Spin-Offs, Voluntary Firm Creation |
| JEL: | M13 O31 O33 |
| Date: | 2023–06–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camjip:2312&r=ino |
| By: | J. Daniel Kim; Joonkyu Choi; Nathan Goldschlag; John Haltiwanger |
| Abstract: | Using administrative data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we introduce a new public-use database that tracks activities across firm growth distributions over time and by firm and establishment characteristics. With these new data, we uncover several key trends on high-growth firms—critical engines of innovation and economic growth. First, the share of firms that are high-growth has steadily decreased over the past four decades, driven not only by falling firm entry rates but also languishing growth among existing firms. Second, this decline is particularly pronounced among young and small firms, while the share of high-growth firms has been relatively stable among large and old firms. Third, the decline in high-growth firms is found in all sectors, but the information sector has shown a modest rebound beginning in 2010. Fourth, there is significant variation in high-growth firm activity across states, with California, Texas, and Florida having high shares of high-growth firms. We highlight several areas for future research enabled by these new data. |
| Keywords: | Firm Growth, Business Dynamism, Entrepreneurship, Business Dynamics Statistics |
| JEL: | L11 L25 L26 O30 O40 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-11&r=ino |
| By: | Bouscasse, P.; Nakamura, E.; Steinsson, J. |
| Abstract: | We provide new estimates of the evolution of productivity in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. We develop and implement a new methodology for estimating productivity that accounts for these Malthusian dynamics. In the early part of our sample, we find that productivity growth was zero. Productivity growth began in 1600—almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. We estimate productivity growth of 3% per decade between 1600 and 1760, which increased to 6% per decade between 1770 and 1860. Our estimates attribute much of the increase in output growth during the Industrial Revolution to a falling land share of production, rather than to faster productivity growth. Our evidence helps distinguish between theories of why growth began. In particular, our findings support the idea that broad-based economic change preceded the bourgeois institutional reforms of 17th century England and may have contributed to causing them. We estimate relatively weak Malthusian population forces on real wages. This implies that our model can generate sustained deviations from the “iron law of wages†prior the Industrial Revolution. |
| JEL: | N13 O40 J10 |
| Date: | 2023–03–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camjip:2309&r=ino |