nep-knm New Economics Papers
on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy
Issue of 2013‒08‒16
four papers chosen by
Laura Stefanescu
European Research Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration

  1. Allocation of Human Capital and Innovation at the Frontier: Firm-Level Evidence on Germany and the Netherlands By Bartelsman, Eric; Dobbelaere, Sabien; Peters, Bettina
  2. What Does Politics Have to Do with Innovation? Economic Distribution and Innovation Policy in OECD Countries By Dan Breznitz; Amos Zehavi
  3. Creative destruction of the university By Krzysztof Leja; Emilia Nagucka
  4. The Role of Intellectual Property Rights in Seed Technology Transfer through Trade: Evidence from US Field Crop Exports By Zhou, Minyu; Sheldon, Ian

  1. By: Bartelsman, Eric (VU University Amsterdam); Dobbelaere, Sabien (VU University Amsterdam); Peters, Bettina (ZEW Mannheim)
    Abstract: This paper examines how productivity effects of human capital and innovation vary at different points of the conditional productivity distribution. Our analysis draws upon two large unbalanced panels of 6,634 enterprises in Germany and 14,586 enterprises in the Netherlands over the period 2000-2008, considering 5 manufacturing and services industries that differ in the level of technological intensity. Industries in the Netherlands are characterized by a larger average proportion of high-skilled employees and industries in Germany by a more unequal distribution of human capital intensity. Except for low-technology manufacturing, average innovation performance is higher in all industries in Germany and the innovation performance distributions are more dispersed in the Netherlands. In both countries, we observe non-linearities in the productivity effects of investing in product innovation in the majority of industries. Frontier firms enjoy the highest returns to product innovation whereas the most negative returns to process innovation are observed in the best-performing enterprises of most industries. In both countries, we find that the returns to human capital increase with proximity to the technological frontier in industries with a low level of technological intensity. Strikingly, a negative complementarity effect between human capital and proximity to the technological frontier is observed in knowledge-intensive services, which is most pronounced for the Netherlands. Suggestive evidence for the latter points to a winner-takes-all interpretation of this finding.
    Keywords: human capital, innovation, productivity, quantile regression
    JEL: C10 I20 O14 O30
    Date: 2013–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7540&r=knm
  2. By: Dan Breznitz; Amos Zehavi
    Abstract: Despite the fact that the distributional impact of innovation has been recognized in the social science literature, hardly any work has been done on the distributional politics of innovation policy. This study offers a first step in this direction as well as asking whether a government’s ideology affects innovation policy from a distributional viewpoint. The paper uses both qualitative case study method and a statistical analysis of government R&D outlays for social purposes in twenty-six countries. In terms of innovation policy, neo-corporatist interest group representation is linked to relatively equitable public R&D investment and left-oriented governments are more likely to invest in social innovation than their rightist counterparts. Nevertheless, governments rarely consider innovation policy in distributive terms. Despite the significant distributional implications of innovation, it remains depoliticized in policy making.
    JEL: O38 D63 P50
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:303&r=knm
  3. By: Krzysztof Leja (Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland); Emilia Nagucka (Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland)
    Abstract: Authors take the issue of change in the modern university. Assuming that the objective of the university is, in addition to the mass education, training the elite of intellectual entrepreneurs (Kwiatkowski, 2000; Kwiatkowski, Sadlak, 2003) - prospective leaders of the knowledge-based society, it is proposed the creative destruction of the university organization, the essence of which is to move the axis of the basic organizational units of the university, such as departments, into teams, and coordination axis of the university move into units. The proposal is embedded in the Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1960), and refers to the Burton Clark’s concept of the entrepreneurial university (Clark, 1998, 2004), the concept of ambidextrous organization (March, 1991, Tushman, O'Reilly III, 1996; Birkinshaw, Gibson, 2004), third generation university by Johan Wissema (2009) and the concept of the knowledge-based university, using the paradigm of knowledge-based organization (Leja, 2011). Additionally, the paper presents the necessary conditions of the proposed change, and the risk associated with it. Authors try to prove, using Gareth Morgan’s metaphors (2001, 2005), that the proposed change is the transition from mechanistic - organism university to the university described by metaphors of organisms and self-organization.
    Keywords: creative destruction, ambidextrous organization, Schumpeter, university, Morgan
    JEL: D23 D83 I23
    Date: 2013–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gdk:wpaper:14&r=knm
  4. By: Zhou, Minyu; Sheldon, Ian
    Keywords: Crop Production/Industries, International Relations/Trade, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,
    Date: 2013–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iatr13:152369&r=knm

This nep-knm issue is ©2013 by Laura Stefanescu. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.