nep-tid New Economics Papers
on Technology and Industrial Dynamics
Issue of 2015‒07‒11
five papers chosen by
Fulvio Castellacci
Universitetet i Oslo

  1. Innovation and Employment in Patenting Firms: Empirical Evidence from Europe By Van Roy, Vincent; Vertesy, Daniel; Vivarelli, Marco
  2. R&D activities and extensive margins of exports in manufacturing enterprises: First evidence for Germany By Joachim Wagner
  3. Temporary employment protection reforms and productivity: evidence from an industry-level panel of EU countries By Kristel Jacquier
  4. Key Enabling Technologies and Smart Specialization Strategies. European Regional Evidence from patent data By Sandro Montresor; Francesco Quatraro
  5. Innovation trade and the size of exporting firms By Letizia Montinari; Massimo Riccabonii; Stefano Schiavo

  1. By: Van Roy, Vincent (European Commission, Joint Research Centre); Vertesy, Daniel (European Commission, Joint Research Centre); Vivarelli, Marco (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)
    Abstract: This paper explores the possible job creation effect of innovation activity. We analyze a unique panel dataset covering almost 20,000 patenting firms from Europe over the period 2003-2012. The main outcome from the proposed GMM-SYS estimations is the labour-friendly nature of innovation, which we measure in terms of forward-citation weighted patents. However, this positive impact of innovation is statistically significant only for firms in the high-tech manufacturing sectors, while not significant in low-tech manufacturing and services.
    Keywords: technological change, innovation, patents, employment, GMM-SYS
    JEL: O31 O33
    Date: 2015–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9147&r=tid
  2. By: Joachim Wagner (Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany)
    Abstract: This paper uses a new tailor-made data set to investigate for the first time the links between innovation activities (measured by employees active in research and development) and the extensive margins of exports (number of destination countries; number of goods exported) for manufacturing enterprises in Germany, the third largest exporter of goods on the world market. It documents that more innovative firms outperform less innovative firms at both margins of exports – they export more goods and they export to a larger number of countries. All these differences are statistically highly significant and large from an economic point of view.
    Keywords: Extensive margins of exports, Germany, innovation, research and development
    JEL: F14
    Date: 2015–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lue:wpaper:343&r=tid
  3. By: Kristel Jacquier (EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS)
    Abstract: We investigate the impact of reforms on employment protection for temporary contracts on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) using panel data of industries across 14 European countries. Within-industry variation over the period 1992-2007 is exploited to capture reforms. The legislation on temporary contracts (EPT) affects the use of such contracts, making it a valid instrument to prove a causal relationship between a change in legislation and macroeconomic performances. Indeed, the two stage estimates emphasize the negative relationship between the share of temporary employment and TFP at the industrial level. Marginal effects prove that increasing regulation on temporary jobs has a strong negative impact on the use of fixed-term contracts if employment protection on regular contract (EPR) is low. When employment protection on open-ended contract reaches its highest level; this effect is stronger. Our study shows that asymmetric institutional change might indeed leads to lower productivity growth through a surge in temporary employment.
    Date: 2015–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-01169260&r=tid
  4. By: Sandro Montresor (Kore University of Enna); Francesco Quatraro (University of Turin)
    Abstract: The paper aims at investigating whether Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) can have a role in facilitating regional Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3). Drawing on the economic geography approach to S3, we formulate some hypotheses about the impact that KETs-related knowledge can have on the construction of new regional technological advantages (RTAs). By crossing regional data on patent applications, in KETs-mapped classes of the International Patent Classification (IPC), with a number of regional economic indicators, we test these hypotheses on a panel of 26 European countries over the period 1980-2010. KETs show a positive impact on the construction of new RTAs, pointing to a new “enabling” role for them. KETs also exert a negative moderating role on the RTAs impact of the density of related pre-existing technologies, pointing to the KETs capacity of making the latter less binding in pursuing S3. Overall, the net-impact of KETs is positive, pointing to a new case for plugging KETs in the S3 policy tool-box.
    Keywords: Key Enabling Technologies; Smart Specialization Strategies; Revealed Technological Advantages
    JEL: R11 R58 O31 O33
    Date: 2015
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:wpaper:201505&r=tid
  5. By: Letizia Montinari (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS)); Massimo Riccabonii (Insititute for advanced studies Lucca); Stefano Schiavo (Department of Economic Geography)
    Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature explaining firm-level heterogenenity in the extensive margin of trade, defined as the number of products exported by each firm. We develop a model where firms must invest in R&D to maintain and increase their portfolio of goods: the process of product innovation by new and incumbent firms is such that the probability to capture new products is a function of the number of varieties already exported. This mechanism, together with the entry/exit dynamics that characterize the economy, gives rise to a Pareto distribution for the number of products exported by each firm. On the other hand, we model export sales as depending on exogenous preference shocks on the demand side, which leads to a lognormal distribution for the intensive margin of trade. Both predictions are consistent with a number of empirical findings recently emerged in the literature; this paper provides additional evidence based on a large dataset of French firms. Finally, a simple extension to the model allows us to derive some interesting insights on the behavior of multi-products firms: sales of different products across destinations are not uncorrelated, but show a rather strict hierarchy.
    Keywords: International trade; Extensive margin; Innovation; Preferential attachment; Multi-product firms
    JEL: F14 F43 L11 O3
    Date: 2013–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/tfpqfk7fp8g29qsj8rsafures&r=tid

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