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on Technology and Industrial Dynamics |
| By: | Marco Grazzi; Chiara Piccardo; Cecilia Vergari |
| Abstract: | This work investigates the relationship between proxies of innovation activities, such as patents and trademarks, and firm performance in terms of revenues, growth and profitability. By resorting to the virtual universe of Italian manufacturing firms this work provides a rather complete picture of the Intellectual Property (IP) strategies pursued by Italian firms, in terms of patents and trademarks, and we study whether the two instruments for protecting IP exhibit complementarity or substitutability. In addition, and to our knowledge novel, we propose a measure of concordance (or proximity) between the patents and trademarks owned by the same firm and we then investigate whether such concordance exert any effect on performance. |
| Keywords: | Trademarks, Patents, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Complementarity, Concordance, Technological proximity, firm performance, firm growth, firm performance, firm growth |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:wpaper:201904&r=all |
| By: | Audretsch, David (Indiana University); Link, Albert (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); van Hasselt, Martijn (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Scientific papers submitted for publication from U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)-funded research projects are an innovative output that has yet to be studied systematically. Using a knowledge production framework, we identify empirically covariates with the number of scientific papers resulting from SBIR projects over the period 1992 through 2001. We find empirically that when the firm involves a university in its funded project, more scientific papers result. When the form of university involvement is taken into account, we find the greatest impact on the output of scientific papers comes from the inclusion of an individual from the university who originally developed the technology being pursued by the firm in its SBIR project. In other words, the project-specific technical human capital knowledge from the university that spills over to the firm's projects begets (i.e., brings about) additional knowledge in the form of scientific papers submitted for publication. |
| Keywords: | innovative; technology; scientific publications; R&D; university knowledge spillovers; Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program; patents; |
| JEL: | J24 O31 O33 O38 |
| Date: | 2019–09–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:uncgec:2019_012&r=all |
| By: | Andre Jungmittag (European Commission – JRC); Annarosa Pesole (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | Based on the expectation that the intensified use of robots contributes to the growth of labour productivity, this paper presents estimates of Cobb-Douglas production functions, using data for 12 EU countries and 9 manufacturing industries. The empirical results for the models pooling all available data confirm that stocks of robots per 1 million Euros non-ICT capital input contribute significantly to labour productivity growth in the period from 1995 to 2015. The results remain robust, when the whole observation period is split into two subsamples from 1995 to 2007 and from 2008 to 2015. Furthermore, the model is used to assess the impact of an increase of robots use on the labour productivity in each of the 9 manufacturing industries considered. |
| Keywords: | Automation, labour productivity, panel data, production function, productivity measurement, robots |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:laedte:201908&r=all |
| By: | Karin Gourdon; Christian Steidl |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an initial assessment of the shipbuilding industry in the context of global value chains by presenting new descriptive evidence on value added generation and sourcing patterns of intermediate inputs for ship construction of major shipbuilding economies. The findings reveal that shipbuilding relies heavily on intermediate inputs as around 70-80% of the final output value of ship production is generated through supplier sectors. Concerning sourcing activity, China appears to be the most self-sufficient among the four jurisdictions studied, followed by Japan and the EU28, while Korea seems to be more globally integrated. The analysis also explores variations among the four economies in the cost structure of shipbuilding inputs, which might partly be explained by differences in the ship types produced. |
| Keywords: | global value chains, input output tables, shipbuilding, value added |
| JEL: | F14 L23 L62 |
| Date: | 2019–11–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:stiaaa:2019/08-en&r=all |
| By: | Richard N. Langlois (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | This paper is an excerpt from a larger book project called The Corporation and the Twentieth Century, which chronicles and interprets the institutional and economic history – the life and times, if you will – of American business in the twentieth century. One integrating theme of the book is that the signal calamities of the Great Depression and World War II, as well as the policy responses to those calamities, are crucial in understanding the structure of American industry in the post-war world. This excerpt examines the role of research and development in the corporation before and during the Depression. It argues that, although corporate R&D labs did generate many important new technologies, innovations also flowed importantly from a large variety of other sources, both within the corporation (but outside of the research lab) and elsewhere in the economy. Even though corporate research did sometimes lead to new products for the corporation to exploit, a narrative in which internal R&D systematized innovation widely in the service of corporate diversification is on the whole a fable. Nonetheless, by destroying market-supporting institutions (including, importantly, sources of external finance) and by reducing the information content of price signals, the Depression did help solidify the nexus between R&D and the large corporation. Coupled with New Deal price and entry regulation in many sectors, and followed by the far greater extent of non-market controls during World War II, the Depression set the stage for the emergence of the large Chandlerian corporation of the post-war period. |
| Keywords: | Research and development; innovation; technological change; economic regulation; Great Depression; New Deal |
| JEL: | D23 L51 L52 L6 L9 N42 N62 N72 N82 O3 P12 P16 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2019-19&r=all |
| By: | David L. Rigby; Christoph Roesler; Dieter Kogler; Ron Boschma; Pierre-Alexandre Balland |
| Abstract: | Smart specialization was conceived as a “bottom-up†framework to identify new growth paths connected to the existing knowledge cores of regions. Operationalization of smart specialization has proven difficult, though a recent “mapping†of technologies in terms of knowledge relatedness and complexity suggests a useful cost-benefit framework. We extend these ideas, locating EU cities in a smart specialization space and tracking their development of alternative technologies over the period 1981 to 2015. Panel models show employment growth and GDP growth are faster in cities that exhibit a logic of technological development consistent with the tenets of smart specialization. |
| Keywords: | smart specialization, policy, complexity, technological relatedness, European Union |
| JEL: | O25 O38 R11 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1931&r=all |
| By: | Ufuk Akcigit; Sina T. Ates; Giammario Impullitti |
| Abstract: | This note examines the optimal mix of tariff policies and R&D subsidies to support domestic firms in global technological competition and to enhance aggregate welfare. |
| Date: | 2019–09–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfn:2019-09-30&r=all |
| By: | Link, Albert (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); van Hasselt, Martijn (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | While the academic and policy literature has focused on patent counts and patent quality as possible outcome measures to evaluate the impact of the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, we argue that the impact of the Act on University effort to transfer its technology to the private sector might be seen more accurately by examining the trend in the initial establishment of technology transfer offices (TTOs). Using an econometric framework to identify the presence of multiple structural breaks in data on the annual number of university TTOs, we find multiple break dates over the period 1925 to 2014. One break date was in the late-1960s and a second break date occurred about 1982. We suggest, in contrast to previous findings in the literature, that the Act did have an impact on the formal internal transfer of technology from universities through patenting by providing an incentive for universities to invest in a TTO research infrastructure. We also suggest that our empirical methodology is applicable to an assessment of the impact of legislation similar to the Bayh-Dole Act in the many countries with such legislation. |
| Keywords: | Bayh-Dole; technology transfer; patenting; structural change; |
| JEL: | C22 C24 O33 O38 |
| Date: | 2019–08–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:uncgec:2019_010&r=all |
| By: | Ulrich Schetter (Center for International Development at Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | We propose a structural alternative to the Economic Complexity Index (ECI, Hidalgo and Hausmann 2009; Hausmann et al. 2011) that ranks countries by their complexity. This ranking is tied to comparative advantages. Hence, it reveals information different from GDP per capita on the deep underlying economic capabilities of countries. Our analysis proceeds in three main steps: (i) We first consider a simplified trade model that is centered on the assumption that countries’ global exports are log-supermodular (Costinot, 2009a), and show that a variant of the ECI correctly ranks countries (and products) by their complexity. This model provides a general theoretical framework for ranking nodes of a weighted (bipartite) graph according to some under- lying unobservable characteristic. (ii) We then embed a structure of log-supermodular productivities into a multi-product Eaton and Kortum (2002)-model, and show how our main insights from the simplified trade model apply to this richer set-up. (iii) We finally implement our structural ranking of economic complexity. The derived ranking is robust and remarkably similar to the one based on the original ECI. |
| Keywords: | bipartite graph, economic complexity, international trade, laplacian matrix, log-supermodularity, monotonic eigenvector, ranking |
| JEL: | F10 F11 F14 O49 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cid:wpfacu:119a&r=all |
| By: | H Peyton Young; Itai Arieli; Yakov Babichenko; Ron Peretz |
| Abstract: | New ways of doing things often get started through the actions of a few innovators, then diffuse rapidly as more and more people come into contact with prior adopters in their social network. Much of the literature focuses on the speed of diffusion as a function of the network topology. In practice the topology may not be known with any precision, and it is constantly in flux as links are formed and severed. Here we establish an upper bound on the expected waiting time until a given proportion of the population has adopted that holds independently of the network structure. Kreindler and Young [38, 2014] demonstrated such a bound for regular networks when agents choose between two options: the innovation and the status quo. Our bound holds for directed and undirected networks of arbitrary size and degree distribution, and for multiple competing innovations with different payoffs. |
| Date: | 2019–11–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:884&r=all |
| By: | Petr Pleticha (CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia; Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Czechia) |
| Abstract: | Business R&D spending has been showed to exert a positive direct as well as indirect, spillover effects on value added. Nevertheless, heterogeneity of the returns to R&D has been seldom examined. Using detailed sectoral data from Czechia over the period 1995-2015, this study finds that privately funded business R&D has both direct and spillover effects, but that the publicly funded part of business R&D only leads to spillovers. The results further suggest that both upstream and downstream spillovers matter, regardless of the source of funding, and that the R&D returns were heavily affected by the economic crisis. Lastly, private R&D offers significant returns only after reaching a critical mass, while the effects of public R&D spending do not profess such non-linearity. The heterogeneity of returns to business R&D needs to be reflected in the design of innovation policy. |
| Keywords: | R&D returns, spillovers, Czechia |
| JEL: | O32 O33 O47 L14 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2019_32&r=all |