nep-knm New Economics Papers
on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy
Issue of 2019‒02‒04
five papers chosen by
Laura Ştefănescu
Centrul European de Studii Manageriale în Administrarea Afacerilor

  1. Predicting innovative firms using web mining and deep learning By Kinne, Jan; Lenz, David
  2. The economization of education and the implications of the quasi-commodification of knowledge on higher education for sustainable development By Biberhofer, Petra
  3. ÉCONOMIE NUMÉRIQUE ET CROISSANCE ÉCONOMIQUE AU CAMEROUN By Joseph Herman Tiona Wamba; Barbara Linda Ngono Ndjie
  4. Digital Government: ICT and Public Sector Management in Africa By Evans, Olaniyi
  5. Learning Efficiency Shocks, Knowledge Capital and the Business Cycle: A Bayesian Evaluation By Alok Johri; Muhebullah Karimzada

  1. By: Kinne, Jan; Lenz, David
    Abstract: Innovation is considered as a main driver of economic growth. Promoting the development of innovation through STI (science, technology and innovation) policies requires accurate indicators of innovation. Traditional indicators often lack coverage, granularity as well as timeliness and involve high data collection costs, especially when conducted at a large scale. In this paper, we propose a novel approach on how to create firm-level innovation indicators at the scale of millions of firms. We use traditional firm-level innovation indicators from the questionnaire-based Community Innovation Survey (CIS) survey to train an artificial neural network classification model on labelled (innovative/non-innovative) web texts of surveyed firms. Subsequently, we apply this classification model to the web texts of hundreds of thousands of firms in Germany to predict their innovation status. Our results show that this approach produces credible predictions and has the potential to be a valuable and highly cost-efficient addition to the existing set of innovation indicators, especially due to its coverage and regional granularity. The predicted firm-level probabilities can also directly be interpreted as a continuous measure of innovativeness, opening up additional advantages over traditional binary innovation indicators.
    Keywords: Web Mining,Web Scraping,R&D,R&I,STI,Innovation,Indicators,Text Mining,Natural Language Processing,NLP,Deep Learning
    JEL: O30 C81 C83
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:19001&r=all
  2. By: Biberhofer, Petra
    Abstract: This paper analyses an ongoing economization trend in the sphere of higher education (HE) and discusses its implications on higher education for sustainable development (HESD). The sources of this trend are connected with neoliberalism understood as a political project that seeks to extend competitive market forces, consolidate a market-friendly constitution, and promote individual freedom. In global HE neoliberalism, decision-makers, be it educational, scientific, or other, are pressured to assess how their activities impact financially on the individual, organizational, and institutional levels and/or the imperatives of an internationally competitive economy. The paper provides a contemporary analysis of the rise of neoliberalism in HE, understood as the specific trend of an academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime explained by Jessop's six analytic distinct and potentially overlapping stages of economization. This analysis is based on a review of European policies from 2006 until 2017 and explains characteristics of current economization strategies. Their core principles relating to higher education are about improving economic performance based on knowledge and innovation. Smart growth is defined politically as the main purpose of HE and positioning students as future workers, with the right higher skills, as the means. The relevance of students' skills higher education institutions (HEI) are urged to develop highly depend on business demands. European policies are driven by a comprehensive entrepreneurial agenda restructuring the organizational mechanisms in HE. Accountability towards the labour market and skills performance of students set this agenda. Funding strategies rest on strong industry ties and diversification of revenue streams depend on HEI capability to establish tech-driven knowledge alliances between research, education and business. These new intermediary and powerful alliances drive economization strategies, influence curriculum development and decide on relevant higher level skills. Respective learning practices are oriented strongly towards developing entrepreneurial and digital skills based on personalized learning environments. Currently HESD adapts towards a neoliberal education agenda rather than preventing further shifts from a capitalist towards a competitive financialized economy. A profound critique would have to question the dominant economization trends in higher education i.e. the very purpose of education and the current raison d¿etre of HEI. The core of the critique might build on new institutionalized learning environments allowing deep, social learning and, hence, the potential of HEI to act as social catalysts empowering collective and disruptive agency.
    Keywords: economization, higher education, sustainable development, neoliberalism, knowledge-based economy
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus009:6801&r=all
  3. By: Joseph Herman Tiona Wamba (ENSET Douala - Ecole Normale Supérieure de l'Enseignement Technique ENSET Douala - Université de Douala); Barbara Linda Ngono Ndjie
    Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to bring a new vision to understand the digital economy as a lever of economic growth. As compared to ordinary economy, digital economy is the "manna" that some countries need, to emerge from poverty. To rip our objectives, we developed we went through research proposals and a theoretical review, to conduct an empirical study on IT firms. Having analyzed our data, the main findings depict a substantial impact of ICT on indicators such as productivity and employment. However, for the success of ICT businesses, the mobilization of financial, logistical, socio-economic and even educational resources is necessary. As a result, for development to follow, the public authority should set up strategies to accompany ICT start-uppers so that they could improve their prints in the economic activity without forgetting the stakes, challenges and setbacks such a business activity entails.
    Abstract: L'objectif de cette communication est d'apporter une nouvelle vision permettant d'appréhender l'économie numérique en tant que levier de croissance économique. Concept désormais très en vogue, cette économie comparée à l'économie ordinaire, est la « manne » dont ont besoin certains pays pour sortir de la pauvreté. Notre démarche a consisté à émettre des propositions de recherche inspirées d'une revue théorique. Ensuite, nous avons collecté des données auprès de quatre entreprises des TIC. Au terme des analyses, il ressort un impact substantiel des TIC sur des indicateurs tels que la productivité et le taux d'emploi. Toutefois, pour la réussite d'une telle entreprise, la mobilisation des moyens financiers, logistiques, socio-économiques et même éducatifs s'avère nécessaire. Aussi, pour que le développement suive, l'autorité publique devrait mettre sur pied des mesures pour accompagner, ce phénomène tant rentable que mélioratif dans l'activité économique sans oublier les enjeux, défis et revers qu'il comporte.
    Keywords: économie numérique,croissance économique,emploi,productivité
    Date: 2019–01–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01970291&r=all
  4. By: Evans, Olaniyi
    Abstract: This study examines the effect of information and communication technologies (ICT) on public sector management in Africa for the period 1995–2015 using panel GMM model and Toda-Yamamoto causality tests. The empirical evidence shows that ICT has a positive and statistically significant effect on public sector management, meaning that an increase in ICT is associated with improved public sector management. There is also a bi-directional causality between ICT and public sector management, suggesting that ICT spurs public sector management which, in turn, spurs ICT even further. The public sector, civil society and international actors therefore have the responsibility to collaborate at developing policies and applications that will maximize the potentials of digital government to every level of public sector in Africa.
    Keywords: Digital Government; ICT; Public Sector Management; public value; e-government
    JEL: H0 H00 H5 H54
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:91628&r=all
  5. By: Alok Johri; Muhebullah Karimzada
    Abstract: We incorporate shocks to the efficiency with which firms learn from production activity and accumulate knowledge into an otherwise standard real DSGE model with imperfect competition. Using real aggregate data and Bayesian inference techniques, we find that learning efficiency shocks are an important source of observed variation in the growth rate of aggregate output, investment, consumption and especially hours worked in post-war US data. The estimated shock processes suggest much less exogenous variation in preferences and total factor productivity are needed by our model to account for the joint dynamics of consumption and hours. This occurs because learning efficiency shocks induce shifts in labour demand uncorrelated with current TFP, a role usually played by preference shocks. At the same time, knowledge capital acts like an endogenous source of productivity variation in the model. Measures of model fit prefer the specification with learning efficiency shocks. Independent evidence on learning efficiency shocks are provided using sign-restriction based structural vector auto-regressions.
    Keywords: Business Cycles, Learning-by-Doing, Learning Efficiency Shocks, Knowledge Capital
    JEL: E32
    Date: 2018–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcm:deptwp:2018-18&r=all

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