nep-tid New Economics Papers
on Technology and Industrial Dynamics
Issue of 2012‒11‒24
two papers chosen by
Rui Baptista
Technical University of Lisbon

  1. Market size, institutions, and the value of rights provided by patents By Bas Straathof; Sander van Veldhuizen
  2. Buyer power and suppliers' incentives to innovate By Köhler, Christian; Rammer, Christian

  1. By: Bas Straathof; Sander van Veldhuizen
    Abstract: Despite the centrality of incentives for innovation in models of economic growth, there is little systematic evidence that the value of technologies varies with market size and institutional arrangements. This paper presents micro-evidence indicating the value of patent rights for a given technology show substantial variation across countries. Read also the <a href="http://www.cpb.nl/en/publication/the-value-of-a-well-designed-eu-patent">CPB Policy Brief 2012/05 'The value of a well-designed EU Patent'</a>. A large part of this variation can be attributed to market size and institutional arrangements. We estimate the value of patent rights by exploiting the validation behavior of holders of European Patents granted in 2004. We control for unobserved patent and country characteristics. The mean value of patent rights across countries ranges from 17 thousand euro in Germany to 400 euro in Ireland. The mean value over 16 countries is 9 thousand euro per country. Protection of intellectual property rights and market size seem to explain most of the German advantage. The estimated total value of granted European Patents is 2.6 billion euro in 2004, of which a third are German patent rights.
    JEL: O34 O38 K1
    Date: 2012–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:226&r=tid
  2. By: Köhler, Christian; Rammer, Christian
    Abstract: Buyer power is widely considered to decrease innovation incentives of suppliers. However, there is little empirical evidence for this statement. Our paper analyses how buyer power influences innovation incentives of upstream firms while taking into account the type of competition in the downstream market, namely price and technology. We explore this relationship empirically for a unique dataset containing 1,129 observations of German firms from manufacturing and service sectors including information on the economic dependency of firms from their buyers. Using a generalised Tobit model, we find a negative effect of buyer power on a supplier's likelihood to start R&D activities. This negative effect is mitigated if the supplier faces powerful buyers operating under strong price competition. There is also weak evidence for a negative effect of buyer power on suppliers' R&D intensity if the powerful buyer operates under strong technology competition. --
    Keywords: Innovation,Buyer Power
    JEL: L11 O31
    Date: 2012
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:12058&r=tid

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