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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2012‒05‒15
seven papers chosen by Laura Stefanescu European Research Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration |
| By: | Chrysovalantou Liou; Emmanuel Petrakis |
| Abstract: | We study vertical integration incorporating the fact that it creates the possibility of knowledge disclosure. We consider a setting where, through integrating, an upstream monopolist learns its downstream partner’s innovation, and can disclose it to its downstream rival. We show that a vertically integrated firm chooses to fully disclose its knowledge to its downstream rival. Knowledge disclosure intensifies downstream competition but, at the same time, expands the downstream market size. We also show that, due to knowledge disclosure, vertical integration increases firms’ innovation incentives, consumer and total welfare, and decreases, instead of raises, the rival’s cost. |
| Keywords: | Vertical integration, R&D investments, Market floreclosure, Knowledge disclosure |
| JEL: | L13 L22 L42 |
| Date: | 2012–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:we1213&r=knm |
| By: | Cosh, A.; Zhang, J. |
| Abstract: | Whilst the variety of search activities promotes innovation, there is a central tension between a firm's potential benefits from wide and diverse search activities and its ability to reap these potential benefits. In this paper, we argue that the potential and realised benefits from a firm' search activities are influenced not only by its resources and capabilities, but also by the nature of innovation activities at sector level. Drawing upon a statistical analysis of a large scale survey conducted in the US, we examine the impact of a firm's external search strategy along two dimensions (search intensity and direction) on its innovative performance. Our findings suggest that manufacturing firms tend to benefit from wide and diversified search activities whereas knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) firms tend to benefit from narrow and specialised search activities. Furthermore, when taking account of firm size and absorptive capacity, a more nuanced picture emerges. Implications and contributions to the innovation search literature are discussed. |
| Keywords: | variety of search, open innovation, SME, manufacturing, Knowledge intensive business services, US survey |
| JEL: | L25 O14 O32 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp431&r=knm |
| By: | Federico Barbiellini Amidei (Bank of Italy); John Cantwell (Rutgers University); Anna Spadavecchia (University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | The paper explores the long run evolution of Italy's performance in technological innovation as a function of international technology transfer, reconstructing the different phases and dimensions of Italian innovative activity, tracking the transfer of foreign technological knowledge through a number of channels, analysing the impact of imported technology. The study is based on a newly constructed dataset, over the 1861-2009 period, composed of variables related to: innovation activity performance; foreign technology transfer; domestic absorptive and innovative capability. The analysis highlights, also by econometric assessment, the significant contribution of foreign technology both to innovation activity results and to productivity growth. Differences across channels of technology transfer and historical phases emerge, also in connection with the evolution of human capital endowment and domestic innovative capacity. Machinery imports contributed positively both to innovation activity and to productivity growth; inward FDI contributed positively to productivity growth, but not to indigenous innovation activity; the accumulation of technical human capital fuelled both. In the long Italian Golden Age, for the first time the association of foreign technological knowledge with indigenous innovation processes strengthened productivity significantly. More recently instead the dismal productivity growth is negatively associated with formalised innovation activity under-performance and reduced imports of disembodied technology |
| Keywords: | Italy,Technology Transfer,Innovation,Absorptive Capability,Patenting |
| JEL: | N10 O31 O33 F23 O19 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:workqs:qse_07&r=knm |
| By: | Elizabeth U. Cascio; Douglas O. Staiger |
| Abstract: | Educational interventions are often evaluated and compared on the basis of their impacts on test scores. Decades of research have produced two empirical regularities: interventions in later grades tend to have smaller effects than the same interventions in earlier grades, and the test score impacts of early educational interventions almost universally “fade out” over time. This paper explores whether these empirical regularities are an artifact of the common practice of rescaling test scores in terms of a student’s position in a widening distribution of knowledge. If a standard deviation in test scores in later grades translates into a larger difference in knowledge, an intervention’s effect on normalized test scores may fall even as its effect on knowledge does not. We evaluate this hypothesis by fitting a model of education production to correlations in test scores across grades and with college-going using both administrative and survey data. Our results imply that the variance in knowledge does indeed rise as children progress through school, but not enough for test score normalization to fully explain these empirical regularities. |
| JEL: | I20 I21 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2012–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18038&r=knm |
| By: | Jaap W.B. Bos; Ryan C.R. van Lamoen; Mark W.J.L. Sanders |
| Abstract: | In this paper we estimate, using stochastic frontier estimation techniques, the relationship between R&D inputs a innovative output in a sample of Dutch firms. We find that over 63% of between firm variation in observed "innovativeness" can be attributed to inefficiency in the innovation process. The remainder is due to differences in the innovation production process itself. We derive our results including the usual controls and find in addition that large firms tend to look more innovative. But when considered more carefully large firms turn out to be less efficient. With standard estimation techniques this inefficiency is masked by a more productive innovation technology. We thus find evidence of economies of scale in line with the Schumpeter mark II hypothesis (large firms are more innovative), but also show that large firms tend to operate at lower levels of efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, Scale Economies, Frontier |
| JEL: | D21 G21 L10 O3 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:deg:conpap:c016_060&r=knm |
| By: | Francesco Bogliacino (Universidad EAFIT and RISE Group, Medellin); Marco Vivarelli (DISCE, Università Cattolica) |
| Abstract: | In this study we use a unique database covering 25 manufacturing and service sectors for 16 European countries over the period 1996-2005, for a total of 2,295 observations, and apply GMM-SYS panel estimations of a demand-for-labour equation augmented with technology. We find that R&D expenditures have a job-creating effect, in accordance with the previoustheoretical and empirical literature discussed in the paper. Interestingly enough, the labourfriendly nature of R&D emerges in both the flow and the stock specifications. These findings provide further justification for the European Lisbon-Barcelona targets. |
| Keywords: | Technological change, corporate R&D, employment, product innovation, GMMSYS. |
| JEL: | O33 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie2:dises1178&r=knm |
| By: | Martin, Ben; Nightingale, P.; Yegros-Yegros, A. |
| Abstract: | Science and Technology Studies (STS) is one of a number of new research fields to emerge over the last four or five decades. This paper attempts to identify its core academic contributions using the methodology developed by Fagerberg et al. (2011) in their parallel study of Innovation Studies. The paper uses the references cited by the authors of chapters in a number of authoritative 'handbooks', based on the assumption that those authors will collectively have been reasonably comprehensive in identifying the core contributions to the field. The study analyses the publications most highly cited by the handbook authors, in particular examining their content and what they reveal about the various phases in the development of STS. The second part of the study analyses the 'users' of the STS core contributions who have cited these contributions in their own work, exploring their research fields, journals, and geographical location. The paper concludes with some comparisons between STS and the fields of Innovation Studies and Entrepreneurship, in particular with regard to the role of 'institution builders' in helping to develop a new research field. |
| Keywords: | science studies, STS, knowledge base, core contributions, institution builders |
| JEL: | N01 O33 B29 O14 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp427&r=knm |