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on Technology and Industrial Dynamics |
| By: | Ufuk Akcigit (University of Pennsylvania); Murat Celik (University of Pennsylvania); Daron Acemoglu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that openness to new, unconventional and disruptive ideas has a first-order impact on creative innovations---innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. After presenting a motivating model focusing on the choice between incremental and radical innovation, and on how managers of different ages and human capital are sorted across different types of firms, we provide cross-country, firm-level and patent-level evidence consistent with this pattern. Our measures of creative innovations proxy for innovation quality (average number of citations per patent) and creativity (fraction of superstar innovators, the likelihood of a very high number of citations, and generality of patents). Our main proxy for openness to disruption is manager age. This variable is based on the idea that only companies or societies open to such disruption will allow the young to rise up within the hierarchy. Using this proxy at the country, firm or patent level, we present robust evidence that openness to disruption is associated with more creative innovations. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed014:377&r=tid |
| By: | Antoine Dechezleprêtre; Ralf Martin; Myra Mohnen |
| Abstract: | How much should governments subsidize the development of new clean technologies? We use patent citation data to investigate the relative intensity of knowledge spillovers in clean and dirty technologies in two technological fields: energy production and transportation. We introduce a new methodology that takes into account the whole history of patent citations to capture the indirect knowledge spillovers generated by patents. We find that conditional on a wide range of potential confounding factors clean patents receive on average 43% more citations than dirty patents. Knowledge spillovers from clean technologies are comparable in scale to those observed in the IT sector. The radical novelty of clean technologies relative to more incremental dirty inventions seems to account for their superiority. Our results can support public support for clean R&D. They also suggest that green policies might be able to boost economic growth through induced knowledge spillovers. |
| Keywords: | Innovation spill-overs, Climate Change, Growth, Patents, Clean technology, Optimal climate policy |
| JEL: | O30 O44 Q54 Q55 Q58 H23 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1300&r=tid |
| By: | Borrás , Susana (Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School, and CIRCLE, Lund University); Edquist , Charles (CIRCLE, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Who produces scientific and technical knowledge these days? What type of knowledge is being produced and for what purposes? Why are firms and governments funding research and development? This chapter studies the role of knowledge production (especially R&D activities) in the innovation process from an innovation system perspective. It examines how governments and public agencies in different countries and at different times have actually approached the issue of building, maintaining and using knowledge production in their innovation systems. It also examines the critical and most important issues at stake from the point of view of innovation policy, looking in particular at the unresolved tensions and systemic unbalances related to knowledge production and last but not least, it elaborates a set of overall criteria for the selection and design of relevant policy instruments and addresses those tensions and unbalances. This chapter suggests that innovation policy develops a portfolio approach to the public investment in R&D and knowledge production. |
| Keywords: | Innovation system; innovation policy; knowledge production; R&D; universities; innovation policy instruments |
| JEL: | L38 M38 O25 O31 O32 O33 |
| Date: | 2014–10–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2014_021&r=tid |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena); Javier Changoluisa (School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the effect of new business formation on the productivity of incumbent manufacturing establishments. We obtain robust empirical evidence of productivity improvements that are due to the emergence of new businesses in the same industry, that is, on the output market. This effect is spatially limited to the respective region. Regional competition from new businesses on the input market and cross-industry effects are not related to incumbents' productivity changes. The effect that new competition has on incumbents is moderated by an incumbent's distance from the technological frontier; incumbents close to the frontier exhibit a more pronounced positive reaction. |
| Keywords: | New business formation, productivity, incumbent firms |
| JEL: | L26 D20 O12 |
| Date: | 2014–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2014-025&r=tid |
| By: | Roberto Martino |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates labour productivity dynamics for 1263 regional economies of the European Union during 1991-2007. Despite convergence is usually found to occur conditionally to economy-wide factors, this study reveals a clear process of unconditional convergence for nancial and business-related market services. Indeed this sector is more likely to be characterised by standardized technologies of production. Such an evidence is not found for manufacturing and aggregate productivity, for which long run distribution dynamics are characterized by bimodality. The decomposition of the growth rate of aggregate labour productivity reveals that pure productivity gains drive growth. Structural change plays a minor role in the process, however it halves the contribution of the manufacturing sector for the richest regions, while it enhances the weight of nancial market services. |
| Keywords: | labour productivity, convergence, distribution dynamics, non parametric methods, structural change. |
| JEL: | C14 O11 O40 O47 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2014-18&r=tid |