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on Innovation |
| By: | Lukas Rosenberger; W. Walker Hanlon; Carl Hallmann |
| Abstract: | How did Britain sustain faster rates of economic growth than comparable European countries, such as France, during the Industrial Revolution? We argue that Britain possessed an important but underappreciated innovation advantage: British inventors worked in technologies that were more central within the innovation network. We offer a new approach for measuring the innovation network using patent data from Britain and France in the late-18th and early-19th century. We show that the network influenced innovation outcomes and demonstrate that British inventors worked in more central technologies within the innovation network than French inventors. Drawing on recently developed theoretical tools, and using a novel estimation strategy, we quantify the implications for technology growth rates in Britain compared to France. Our results indicate that the shape of the innovation network, and the location of British inventors within it, explains an important share of the more rapid technological change and industrial growth in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. |
| Keywords: | industrial revolution, innovation network, patents, economic growth |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11299 |
| By: | Brian C. Fujiy |
| Abstract: | I causally estimate local knowledge spillovers in R&D and quantify their importance when implementing R&D policies. Using a new administrative panel on German inventors, I estimate these spillovers by isolating quasi-exogenous variation from the arrival of East German inventors across West Germany after the Reunification of Germany in 1990. Increasing the number of inventors by 1% increases inventor productivity by 0.4%. I build a spatial model of innovation, and show that these spillovers are crucial when reducing migration costs for inventors or implementing R&D subsidies to promote economic activity. |
| Keywords: | inventors, research and development, innovation, agglomeration, spillovers |
| JEL: | F16 J61 O4 O31 R12 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-59 |
| By: | Gong, Huiwen (University of Stavanger); Hassink, Robert (Kiel University) |
| Abstract: | In regional studies and economic geography, interest in regional economic resilience and regional innovation policy has steadily increased in recent decades. Although these two perspectives appear to be closely related, relatively little research has elaborated on the interrelationships between them. In this chapter, we take stock of the current two key conceptual extensions of the work on regional economic resilience, i.e., 1) the simultaneous consideration of regional and value chain resilience and 2) the discussion on transformative resilience and the normative turn on regional innovation policy in economic geography and beyond. Overall, we find that the shift toward more sustainable and inclusive development is increasingly being advocated by scholars working on regional resilience or regional innovation policy, leading to increased interest in new concepts such as "transformative resilience" and "challenge-oriented/transformative regional innovation policy" in the respective research fields. However, there is relatively little evidence on how regional resilience that is transformative in nature (e.g., transformative resilience) can be fostered by the new generation of regional innovation policy and how the increasing frequency of shocks of all kinds requires new thinking in regional innovation policy. We therefore suggest four promising avenues for future research that link the hitherto largely isolated perspectives of regional resilience and regional innovation policy to explain regional economic change in the post-crisis period. |
| Keywords: | regional innovation policy; regional resilience; transformative resilience; economic geography |
| JEL: | O30 O38 R10 |
| Date: | 2024–11–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2024_015 |
| By: | Maximiliano Machado (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Carlos Bianchi (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | A large body of literature has identified positive persistence effects of innovation in firms located in developed countries. However, this is not the rule in developing economies. This article adds to this topic by analysing the short- and medium-term innovation persistence in Uruguayan firms during the recent period of expansion of the innovation policies in this country. Using a panel data set from the Uruguayan Innovation Survey 2007–2018, we run parametric and nonparametric estimations of firms’ innovation persistence in manufacturing and service sectors. Our findings indicate that innovation is an uneven, even erratic, process. Contrary to most of the extant research on the topic, we find mostly negative persistence effects of outcome innovation (both product and process) in the short term and positive persistence effects of R&D and innovation activities based on external knowledge acquisition (input innovation) in the medium term. Moreover, we observe positive effects of public support on both input and outcome innovation in the short term but no effects in the medium term. We discuss timing and coordination challenges for innovation policies in Uruguay, and the applicability of our findings to developing countries as an alternative to the extended interpretation of innovation as a self-efficient process. |
| Keywords: | Innovation input, Innovation persistence, Innovation outcome, Policy mix |
| JEL: | O31 O32 L25 C01 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-06-24 |
| By: | Anton-Tejon, Marcos; Barge-Gil, Andrés; Albahari, Alberto |
| Abstract: | The interest in regional innovation policies has increased in recent years. Science and Technology Parks (STPs) are one of the most widespread regional innovation policies worldwide. They are considered a catalyst for regional innovation because they constitute a source of knowledge spillovers and a mechanism for knowledge transfer. The aim of this work is to evaluate the effect of the adoption of the STP policy on regional innovation performance. To this end, we build a provincial dataset for Spain covering 37 years and implement a difference-in-differences approach taking advantage of the staggered adoption of the STP policy and the fact that some provinces do not have an STP yet. The main results show that STPs increase provincial patents by 49.8% in years 6-10 after the adoption of the policy and by 79.7% in years 11-15.This result is robust to different assumptions and methodological choices. In addition, we find that the increase in patents does not come at the cost of lower patent quality, that STPs perform similarly in more or less advanced provinces, and that approximately 57% of the effect comes through STP spillovers. |
| Keywords: | Science and Technology Parks; innovation policy evaluation; regional effects; spillovers; patents; diff-in-diff |
| JEL: | O30 O31 O32 O38 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:122467 |
| By: | Timothy Wojan |
| Abstract: | The Annual Business Survey (ABS) as the replacement for the Survey of Business Owners (SBO) serves as the principal data source for investigating business ownership of minorities, women, and immigrants. As a combination of SBO, the innovation questions formerly collected in the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS), and an R&D module for microbusinesses with fewer than 10 employees, ABS opens new research opportunities investigating how ownership demographics are associated with innovation. One critical issue that ABS is uniquely able to investigate is the role that diversity among ownership teams plays in facilitating innovation or intermediate innovation outcomes in R&D-performing microbusinesses. Earlier research using ABS identified both demographic and disciplinary diversity as strong correlates to new-to-market innovation. This research investigates the extent to which the various forms of diversity also impact tangible innovation related intermediate outcomes such as the awarding of patents or securing venture capital financing for R&D. The other major difference with the earlier work is the focus on R&D-performing microbusinesses that are an essential input to radical innovation through the division of innovative labor. Evidence that disciplinary and/or demographic diversity affect the likelihood of receiving a patent or securing venture capital financing by small, high-tech start-ups may have implications for higher education, affirmative action, and immigration policy. |
| Keywords: | Split-sample, false discovery, self-reported innovation, women and minority owned business, hypothesis testing |
| JEL: | O3 J15 J16 C12 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-62 |
| By: | Di Addario, Sabrina (Bank of Italy); Feng, Zhexin (University of Essex); Serafinelli, Michel (King's College London) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents direct evidence on how firms' innovation is affected by access to knowledgeable labor through co-worker network connections. We use a unique dataset that matches patent data to administrative employer - employee records from "Third Italy" - a region with many successful industrial clusters. Establishment closures displacing inventors generate supply shocks of knowledgeable labor to firms that employ the inventors' previous co-workers. We estimate event-study models where the treatment is the displacement of a "connected" inventor (i.e., a previous coworker of a current employee of the focal firm). We show that the displacement of a connected inventor significantly increases connected inventors' hiring. Moreover, the improved access to knowledgeable workers raises firms innovative activity. We provide evidence supporting the main hypothesized channel of knowledge transfer through firm-to-firm labor mobility by estimating IV specifications where we use the displacement of a connected inventor as an instrument to hire a connected inventor. Overall, estimates indicate that firms exploit displacements to recruit connected inventors and the improved capacity to employ knowledgeable labor within the network increases innovation. |
| Keywords: | social connections, firm-to-firm labor mobility, patents, establishment closure |
| JEL: | J60 O30 J23 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17398 |
| By: | Christoph Koenig (DEF, University of Rome "Tor Vergata"); Letizia Borgomeo (Research Department, Intesa Sanpaolo); Martina Miotto (DEM, University of Padova) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of a government subsidy program in Italy targeted at R&D-intensive projects presented by high-tech startups in 2009. Using the score assigned by the scientific commission to each project, we employ a Regression Discontinuity Design to study how the subsidy affected successful firms’ innovation activity and performance over more than 10 years. We show that the subsidy led to substantial increases in intangible assets and had a lasting positive effect on various dimensions of firm performance. Innovation as measured by patents did not respond to the subsidy. |
| Keywords: | R&D subsidies, High-tech startups, Innovation policy, Firm performance |
| JEL: | D22 G38 L52 O31 O34 O38 |
| Date: | 2024–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:585 |
| By: | Ali Sina Önder (University of Portsmouth); Sascha Schweitzer (Reutlingen University); Olga Tcaci (TUD Dresden University of Technology) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the impact of technological innovation on regional labor market outcomes. Our identification strategy exploits pre-reunification complementarities in innovation between East and West Germany. We employ individual-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to analyze labor market out- comes. Individuals’ income in West German counties with pre-reunification complementarities increased by 1.3%-1.5% on average after reunification. The effect is amplified when disentangling for different occupations: Income increases by 27%-29%, self-employment increases significantly, unemployment remains unaffected. The use of East German know-how in West German patents after reunification is driven by the migration of East German inventors to West German counties. |
| Keywords: | Economic Development; Patent Analysis; Knowledge Complementarities; Occupations; German Reunification |
| JEL: | J24 O31 O33 R11 |
| Date: | 2024–11–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pbs:ecofin:2024-07 |
| By: | Abbasiharofteh, Milad (University of Groningen); Kriesch, Lukas (Justus Liebig University Giessen) |
| Abstract: | A twin (a joint green and digital) transition aims to facilitate achieving the Green Deal goals. The interplay between regional capabilities and twin transition market applications remains understudied. This research utilizes Large Language Models to analyze web texts of more than 600, 000 German firms, assessing whether their products contribute to the twin transition. Our findings suggest while AI capabilities benefit the twin transition market applications, clean technological capabilities play a significant role only in highly specialized regions. To facilitate future research and informed policymaking, we provide open access to our developed dataset and AI tools (i.e., the TwinTransition Mapper). |
| Keywords: | Twin transition; TwinTransition Mapper; digital layer; technological capabilities |
| JEL: | C81 C88 O30 O31 |
| Date: | 2024–11–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2024_016 |
| By: | Engberg, Erik (The Ratio Institute); Hellsten, Mark (The Ratio Institute); Javed, Farrukh (The Ratio Institute); Lodefalk, Magnus (The Ratio Institute); Sabolová, Radka (The Ratio Institute); Schroeder, Sara (The Ratio Institute); Tang, Aili (The Ratio Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on hiring and employment, using the universe of job postings published by the Swedish Public Employment Service from 2014-2022 and universal register data for Sweden. We construct a detailed measure of AI exposure according to occupational content and find that establishments exposed to AI are more likely to hire AI workers. Survey data further indicate that AI exposure aligns with greater use of AI services. Importantly, rather than displacing non-AI workers, AI exposure is positively associated with increased hiring for both AI and non-AI roles. In the absence of substantial productivity gains that might account for this increase, we interpret the positive link between AI exposure and non-AI hiring as evidence that establishments are using AI to augment existing roles and expand task capabilities, rather than to replace non-AI workers. |
| Keywords: | Artificial Intelligence; Technological Change; Automation; Labour Demand |
| JEL: | D22 J23 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2024–11–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0380 |
| By: | Ashish Arora; Sharon Belenzon; Elia Ferracuti; Jay Prakash Nagar |
| Abstract: | Estimating the private value of patents is important, yet challenging. By developing a method that uses stock market returns to produce a distribution of patent values (and not just an estimate of the mean of that distribution), Kogan, Papanikolaou, Seru, and Stoffman (2017) (KPSS) opened venues for new research. Researchers have used these estimates to compare average values of different types of patents. In this paper, we argue that KPSS values should not be used in their current form to compare mean values of different groups of patents, and show this to be the case in the context of research on the private returns to scientific patents. We extend the original KPSS method to allow for patents to be drawn from two distinct value distributions. Using this approach, we find that scientific patents have a higher mean value compared to non-scientific patents. |
| JEL: | O3 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33056 |
| By: | Antoine Dechezleprêtre; Hélène Dernis; Luis Díaz; Guy Lalanne; Francesco Losma; Sara Romaniega Sancho; Lea Samek |
| Abstract: | While renewable energy adoption has accelerated globally, significant challenges remain in meeting ambitious deployment targets. This paper analyses bottlenecks in the renewable energy ecosystem and explores policy solutions by examining trade, innovation, M&A, jobs, and skills data. The analysis reveals three key findings: first, the renewable energy ecosystem spans multiple sectors beyond electricity production, with machinery, computer and electronics, and scientific and technical activities playing central roles in innovation activity and job creation; second, supply chain concentration is increasing for both capital goods and critical raw materials, creating dependencies on key supplier countries; and third, while innovation offers a pathway to address these dependencies through developing leading-edge manufacturing capabilities and material substitutes, patenting activity in renewable technologies is declining. Additionally, the sector faces potential skills shortages in engineering and technical trades. The findings suggest successful renewable energy deployment requires coordinated policy approaches addressing innovation support, supply chain resilience, and workforce development. |
| Keywords: | Industrial ecosystems, Industrial policy, Net-zero transition, Renewable energy |
| JEL: | L52 L64 O25 O38 Q42 |
| Date: | 2024–11–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:stiaaa:2024/11-en |
| By: | Linnea Lorentzen; Steinar Strøm; Jon Vislie |
| Abstract: | We derive policy rules for a highly aggregated fossil-based world economy with two competing stochastic thresholds or tipping points. Current production generates emissions that add to a stock of GHGs that affect the probability distribution of hitting a climate threshold with severe consequences (the “ugly” scenario). The fossil-intensive output is used for current consumption and as investment in knowledge production, with the stock of knowledge affecting the probability distribution for hitting a “good” threshold or having a technological breakthrough (the “good” scenario). The new technology will provide a clean emission-free substitute to fossil energy. Given that no threshold has been hit, the decision rules are being continuously revised due to the induced changes in the derived probability distributions. To avoid the ugly scenario, while pushing for the good one, we find that the conditional expected marginal benefit or willingness-to-pay for knowledge will increase over time, with a non-decreasing rate of R&D investment and non-increasing rate of consumption. Implementation of this strategy requires a global organization with coercive power, equipped with instruments to tax the negative stock externality and to eventually subsidize the provision of a public good; the stock of knowledge. The optimal carbon tax is derived and shown to depend on the hazard rate for a climate change, modified by the “odds ratio” for a technological breakthrough. |
| Keywords: | competing stochastic thresholds, climate change, technological innovation, optimal carbon tax, global implementation |
| JEL: | C02 H23 H41 Q54 Q55 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11418 |
| By: | Astebro, Thomas B. (HEC Paris) |
| Abstract: | This report to the "Investigation on development of the innovation and entrepreneurship climate in Sweden" SOU 2016:72 regards governmental policies for university technology commercialization. It contains a literature review that spans several areas of research addressing the potential effect of changing the allocation of Intellectual Property rights between universities and their employees. There is also some original research; several secondary datasets are re‐analyzed and some primary interview and case data from a few universities are also added. |
| Keywords: | Technology Commercialization; Intellectual Property; Universities; Property Rights; Technology Transfer |
| JEL: | D72 D81 K31 O31 P14 |
| Date: | 2024–02–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ebg:heccah:1502 |