Search

This paper studies life cycle creativity among Nobel laureate economists. We identify two distinct life cycles of scholarly creativity. Experimental innovators work inductively, accumulating knowledge from experience. Conceptual innovators work deductively, applying abstract principles. We find that conceptual innovators do their most important work earlier in their careers than experimental laureates. For instance, our estimates imply that the probability that the most conceptual laureate publishes his single best work peaks at age 25 compared to the mid-50s for the most experimental laureate. Thus while experience benefits experimental innovators, newness to a field benefits conceptual innovators.

This paper analyses and quantifies the effects of trade liberalisation and skill-biased technical change, both exogenous and trade-induced, on the skill premium and real wages of unskilled and skilled workers in the Mexican manufacturing sector, using industry- and firm-level data for 1984-1990 from the Encuesta Industrial Anual. The novelty of the paper lies in its strategy for identifying causality, which uses differences across industries over time in the relative price of machinery and equipment in the US as an instrument for skill-biased technical change. The effect of trade-induced SBTC on wages, and especially on wage inequality, appears substantial. The regressions show that trade liberalisation and changes in the relative price of equipment in the US, which induce exogenous SBTC in Mexico, explain one quarter of the increase in relative skilled wages between 1984 and 1990. This rise in the skill premium due to SBTC and trade liberalisation mainly reflect a rise in real skilled wages, although with some specifications it was amplified by a fall in the real wages of unskilled workers.

How and why does the firm size distribution differ across countries? Using two datasets covering more than 30 countries, this paper documents that several features of the firm size distribution are strongly associated with income per capita: the entrepreneurship rate and the fraction of small firms fall with per capita income across countries, while average firm employment, the median and higher percentiles of the firm size distribution, and the dispersion and skewness of employment all rise with per capita income. The paper broadens existing evidence on the first three facts to cover more countries and newly introduces the last three to the literature. It then proposes a simple theory of skill-biased change in entrepreneurial technology motivated by recent microeconomic literature that fits with the evidence. For this, it introduces two additional features into an otherwise standard occupational choice, heterogeneous firm model a la Lucas (1978): technological change does not benefit all potential entrepreneurs equally, and there is a positive relationship between an individual's potential payoffs in working and in entrepreneurship. If some firms consistently benefit more from technological progress than others, they stay closer to the frontier, while others fall behind. Because wages rise for all workers, marginal entrepreneurs exit and become workers. Quantitatively, the model fits both the U.S. time series experience and cross-country patterns well.

This paper focuses on the role of capabilities in economic development. In recent years, the quality and availability of data on different aspects of development have improved, and this provides new opportunities for investigating the reasons behind the large differences in economic development. Using factor analysis on data for 25 indicators and 115 countries between 1992 and 2004, we identify four different types of “capabilities”: the development of the “innovation system”, the quality of “governance”, the character of the “political system” and the degree of “openness” of the economy. Innovation systems and governance are shown to be of particular importance for economic development.

We explore how examiner behavior is altered by the time allocated for reviewing patent applications. Insufficient examination time may hamper examiner search and rejection efforts, leaving examiners more inclined to grant invalid applications. To test this prediction, we use application-level data to trace the behavior of individual examiners over the course of a series of promotions that carry with them reductions in examination-time allocations. We find evidence demonstrating that such promotions are associated with reductions in examination scrutiny and increases in granting tendencies, as well as evidence that those additional patents being issued on the margin are of below-average quality.

Economists think of medical innovation as a valuable but risky good, producing health benefits but increasing financial risk. This perspective overlooks how innovation can lower physical risks borne by healthy patients facing the prospect of future disease. We present an alternative framework that accounts for all these aspects of value and links them to the value of health insurance. We show that any innovation worth buying reduces overall risk, thereby generating positive insurance value on its own. We conduct two empirical exercises to assess the significance of our insights. First, we calculate that conventional methods underestimate the value of historical health gains by 30-80%. Second, we examine a large set of medical technologies and calculate that insurance value on average adds 100% to the conventional valuation of those treatments. Moreover, we find that the physical risk-reduction value of these technologies is ten times greater than the financial risk they pose and the corresponding value of health insurance that insures this financial risk. Our analysis also suggests standard methods disproportionately undervalue treatments for the most severe illnesses, where physical risk to consumers is most costly.

This paper assesses whether European firms’ innovative performance is impacted by investments in training directly aimed at developing and/or introducing innovation, in addition to the scale of a firm's investments in innovation proxied by the number of R&D personnels. In particular, it explores the complementarity between these two factors (in the presence of a well-trained workforce, the knowledge created by a firm’s R&D personnel can be better exploited), and their dependence on a firm's knowledge intensity (high versus low % of tertiary-educated workforce) and size (SMEs versus large firms). Using European CIS non-anonymised data for the period 1998-2000, this paper estimates a system of simultaneous equations in which investments in training and stock of R&D personnel are treated as endogenous in relation to the innovative sales on which they are presumed to have an effect. The choice to use this time period rather than more recent ones – to which I had access at the Eurostat Safe Centre – is data-driven. It has better information on training expenditures and it is the last period to provide firm-level information on the number of employees with tertiary education. Unlike the majority of CIS-based studies, the main variables of interest are continuous ones, while dummy variables are used as controls only. Empirical evidence confirms most previous results – investment in training and stock of R&D personnel positively affects firms' innovativeness – but also provides some important additional insights. Ceteris paribus, returns to training and R&D personnel are not affected by the knowledge intensity of the firm, while are always statistically significantly higher in large than in small and medium sized firms. However, while in the case of training the differences in returns between SME and large firms are small, in the case of R&D personnel are quite pronounced.

(english) During the last half-century, the evolution of educational attainment among Malaysians has been spectacular, and current enrollment rates suggest this progression will continue, albeit at a slower pace. Such a transformation of the educational attainment of labor should bring about macroeconomic effects such as wage compression, sectoral shifts and/or high skill un- employment, unless compensatory mechanisms exist. This article examines the impact of this evolution using a dynamic general equilibrium model applied to Malaysia. We argue that skill biased technological change occurred in Malaysia in recent years, and permitted unemployment figures to remain low and skill premia not to sink, despite the shift in skill structure. We run a retrospective simulation, looking at how unemployment and wages would have reacted had skill biased technological change not been prevalent. We also simulate the effects of a restriction in the supply of education to understand the impact of recent educational policy in Malaysia. The results are fed to a microdata set using a microaccounting technique, addressing distributional concerns. Our results show that the reduction in wage inequalities could have been substan- tially more important had skill biased technological change not been present. Furthermore, they suggest that the open-door higher education policy has contributed heavily to a reduction in wage inequalities. _________________________________ (français) Depuis plusieurs décennies, l’évolution des dotations éducationnelles des malaisiens a été spectaculaire, et les taux de scolarisation actuels indiquent que cette tendance va se poursuivre. Une telle transformation des dotations éducationnelles des travailleurs devraient engendrer des effets macroéconomiques tels qu’une compression des salaires, des glissements sectoriels et une hausse du chômage des qualifiés, en l’absence de mécanismes compensatoires. Cet article examine l’impact d’une telle évolution en utilisant un modèle d’équilibre général dynamique appliqué à la Malaisie. Nous affirmons qu’un progrès technique biaisé en faveur du travail qualifié a été présent en Malaisie dans la période récente, permettant des taux de chômage des qualifiés à rester bas et les rapports salariaux à ne pas baisser, malgré l’évolution de la structure des dotations. Nous faisons une simulation rétrospective, examinant les effets potentiels sur le chômage et les salaires en l’absence du biais du progrès technique. Nous simulons également une restriction de l’offre d’éducation pour comprendre l’impact de la politique de formation récente en Malaisie. Les résultats sont injectés dans une base de microdonnées utilisant une technique de microsimulation. Les résultats montrent que la réduction des inégalités salariales aurait pu être plus forte en l’absence du progrès technique biaisé. Ils suggèrent en outre que la politique éducative généreuse a fortement contribué à une réduction de ces inégalités.

We use an extended version of the well-established Crepon, Duguet and Mairesse model (1998) to model the relationship between appropriability mechanisms, innovation and firm-level productivity. We enrich this model in several ways. First, we consider different types of innovation spending and study the differences in estimates when innovation spending (rather than R&D spending) is used to predict innovation in the CDM model. Second, we assume that a firm simultaneously innovates and chooses among different appropriability methods (formal or informal) to protect the innovation. Finally, in the third stage, we estimate the impact of the innovation output conditional on the choice of appropriability mechanisms on firms' productivity. We find that firms that innovate and rate formal methods for the protection of Intellectual Property (IP) highly are more productive than other firms, but that the same does not hold in the case of informal methods for the protection of a firm's IP, except possibly for large firms as opposed to SMEs. We also find that this result is strongest for firms in the services, trade, and utility sectors, and negative in the manufacturing sector.

The aim of this paper is to assess the effect of university research on total factor productivity in Italy. The impact of universities on firms’ performance is highly complex, nevertheless we shall attempt to verify how geographical location, sector and firm size may influence this relationship. Results show that university R&D does not seem to affect firm productivity, yet if we consider geographical location and sector, we find that universities have a positive effect on the performance of firms located in the North of Italy and on firms operating in the specialised supplier sector. Several robustness checks confirm the significant role played by universities especially in the North of Italy. Finally, the policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Most OECD countries experience high unemployment rates and declining growth in higher educational attainment. An often suggested government policy is therefore to allocate resources towards formal schooling for adults. However, returns on such investments are uncertain and the foregone earnings are potentially large. We use Swedish population register data from 1982 to 2011 to estimate average long run earnings returns on higher education for 29- to 55-year-olds who enrolled 1992-1993. We find substantial positive estimates, but these only fully emerge after approximately ten years. Nevertheless, calculations indicate that the benefits for society exceed the costs also under fairly pessimistic assumptions.

Companies are under an increasing pressure by policy makers to publicize data breaches. Such notification obligations require announcing the loss of personal data collected from customers, because of hacker attacks or other incidents. While notification is likely to impact on firms’ reputation, we know little about the impact such notifications have on consumers with respect to disclosure of their personal data. We present the problem as a dynamic lottery with personal data under the risk of privacy shocks and experimentally study how the privacy breach notification changes an individual’s behavior regarding data disclosure. Our results suggest that the notification induces individuals – disregarding the sensitivity of their data – to disclose more.

Firms from emerging countries such as Brazil, India, and China (BIC) are going global, and Europe is attracting around one-third of their direct outward investments. Growing internationalization constitutes an opportunity for technological catch up. In this paper we analyze BIC firms' cross-border inventions with European Union (EU-27) actors, during the period 1990-2012. Our results suggest that cross-border inventions represent an opportunity for BIC firms to accumulate technological capabilities, access frontier knowledge, and appropriate the property rights of co-inventions. This paper contributes to the understanding of the catching up process by emerging country firms, and offers some policy recommendations.

In this paper we investigate the process of creation and destruction of industries as it stems from productivity increasing innovations and from the induced changes of consumption patterns. In our model industries whose demand increases experience an expansion of the number of intermediate goods and hence of their research effort, while those whose demand declines undergo a cost-cutting restructuring with a corresponding reduction of the number of intermediates. We show that if aggregate consumption is concentrated on high (low) priority goods in the early (later) stages of the economy’s development and spread out more evenly in an intermediate stage, then the diversification of the economy over the development path is inversely U-shaped: a result that is consistent with the empirical evidence in Imbs and Wacziarg 2003 “Stages of Diversification.” American Economic Review 93: 63–86.

Co-location alone is not sufficient to ensure efficient and effective interaction between economic agents. Also, institutions at multiple scales shape the behaviour of organizations and provide incentives for interaction. However, institutions, as well as the impact of institutions on economic agents, are not static, but rather change over time. In this paper we investigate this dynamic process: How does institutional change at different geographical scales affect localized learning processes? Using an intensive case study of the medical technology sector in Southern Sweden, we trace in detail how institutions at the supra-national, national and regional scale have changed over the past 15 years and how these have affected the opportunities for localized learning between firms and hospitals. Our case makes three contributions. First, it provides a detailed empirical example of the interdependencies between institutions at the supra-national, national and regional scales. Second, as institutions shape the behaviour of organizations, we demonstrate that institutional change introduced at the extra-regional scale can have profound consequences for the establishment of local innovation linkages – and thereby for the opportunities for localized learning. Third, this leads us to reconsider the ambitions of regional policies that aim to enhance localized learning.

We estimate a time series model of weather shocks on English wheat yields for the early nineteenth century and use it to predict weather effects on yield levels from 1697 to 1871. This reveals that yields in the 1690s were depressed by unusually poor weather; and those in the late 1850s were inflated by unusually good weather. This has led researchers to overestimate the underlying growth of yields over the period by perhaps 50%. Correcting for this effect would largely reconcile the conflicting primal and dual estimates of productivity growth over the period.

Quantifying possible inefficiencies stemming from regulation is important to both policymakers and researchers. We use a dynamic structural model to evaluate the role of local market entry regulations in the productivity of retail trade. Our model is flexible with respect to how local market regulations influence store productivity and controls for demand in local markets. We combine the structural approach with detailed data on all stores in the Swedish retail industry. The results show that more liberal entry regulations increase future productivity and that the increase in productivity is larger for small stores and small markets than for large stores and large markets.

Ideas are strangely absent from modern models of political economy. In most prevailing theories of policy choice, the dominant role is instead played by “vested interests”—elites, lobbies, and rent-seeking groups which get their way at the expense of the general public. Any model of political economy in which organized interests do not figure prominently is likely to remain vacuous and incomplete. But it does not follow from this that interests are the ultimate determinant of political outcomes. Here I will challenge the notion that there is a well-defined mapping from “interests” to outcomes. This mapping depends on many unstated assumptions about the ideas that political agents have about: 1) what they are maximizing, 2) how the world works, and 3) the set of tools they have at their disposal to further their interests. Importantly, these ideas are subject to both manipulation and innovation, making them part of the political game. There is, in fact, a direct parallel, as I will show, between inventive activity in technology, which economists now routinely make endogenous in their models, and investment in persuasion and policy innovation in the political arena. I focus specifically on models professing to explain economic inefficiency and argue that outcomes in such models are determined as much by the ideas that elites are presumed to have on feasible strategies as by vested interests themselves. A corollary is that new ideas about policy—or policy entrepreneurship—can exert an independent effect on equilibrium outcomes even in the absence of changes in the configuration of political power. I conclude by discussing the sources of new ideas.

Le volume d’articles scientifiques publies augmente de quelques millions par an. L’imperatif « publier ou perir » – ou sa variante « publier, etre cite ou perir » – accelere le rythme de croissance de cette memoire collective, accessible sous une forme condensee ou in extenso dans les bases de donnees specialisees ou les moteurs en ligne. Les reseaux explicitement ou implicitement reveles par les donnees d’articles sont exploites par les sciences sociales – scientometrie, economie et sociologie – mais aussi instrumentes par l’evaluation de la recherche. Les indicateurs scientometriques resultent d’elaborations de ces donnees de base, avec diverses operations : selection des donnees pertinentes, comptage selon diverses options, normalisation par champ ou type de recherche, type d’indicateur, valuation economique, schemas d’indicateurs composites... Nous nous concentrons ici sur une ponderation particuliere du reseau de citations. Entre les techniques classiques et les mesures recursives d’influence, elle introduit une nouvelle methode de normalisation rendant comparables, dans un sens precis, les citations de differents champs scientifiques. Plus generalement, elle offre une mesure simple et performante des echanges de citations, indicatifs des flux de connaissance.

In today's world, globalization has reached to such an extent that, investment in information and technology is inevitable to be integrated with global system and increase competitive power. Therefore, R&D investments are of high importance and priority for growth process of economy. This paper investigates the long-run relationship between R&D expenditure and economic growth using the Johansen co-integration and the vector error correction models. The research findings indicate that there is a unidirectional causal relationship running from economic growth to R&D. the long-run coefficients for the variable R&D is strongly statistically significant and has positive value. The growth rate of GDP will increase 0, 2630% if R&D shares in the GDP increases 1%.

In this research we implement Bayesian Vector Autoregressive model (BVAR) to analyze effect of internal and external shocks on Russian economy. This method allows to identify main transmission channels of monetary policy changes, as well as external shocks. Compared with traditional methods BVAR provides more consistent and accurate identifications for models with large number of variables and estimated on small samples. Bayesian model also produce more accurate out-of-sample forecasts compared with traditional SVAR model, FAVAR and Random Walk.

A tanulmány azt vizsgálja, hogy a nagyobb távolságokra elérő tudáshálózatok képesek-e ellensúlyozni az innováció lokális forrásainak hiányosságait Kelet-Közép- Európa lemaradó régióiban. Az EU-keretprogramok hálózatát alapul véve, a Romer-féle tudástermelési függvénnyel az információtechnológiai iparra vizsgálja a régiók hálózatának minősége és a regionális szabadalmi tevékenység kapcsolatát. Két részmintára - az 1. célkitűzéshez (az európai ipar tudományos és technológiai bázisának szélesítése) tartozó 51 kelet-közép-európai régió, valamint 211, az 1. célkitűzéshez nem tartozó kelet-közép-európai régió és más EU-tagországok régiói - végez öko nomet riai elemzést. A keretprogram-hálózatokból elérhető tudást az ENQ indexszel méri, a lokális tudásáramlásra pedig szisztematikus térbeli panel öko no metriai módszereket alkalmaz. A tanulmány fontos különbségeket mutat meg a két részminta között: míg a kelet-közép-európai régiókban a hálózati együttműködésekből kinyerhető tudás pozitívan hat a régiók szabadalmi tevékenységére, addig a másik részmintában ez a tudás nem szignifikáns a szabadalmi tevékenység inputjai között.* Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kód: C23, O30, R11., The paper investigates whether knowledge networks reaching over long distances can compensate for missing local resources of innovation in Central East European (CEE) regions. Building on the Romer-type knowledge production function, the authors use networks of cooperation under EU framework programmes to evaluate the relation between the quality of inter-regional knowledge networks and regional patenting activity in the information technology industry. Econometric analysis is carried out on two sub-samples: the Objective 1 regions of CEE countries (51 regions) and the non-Objective regions plus the regions of other EU countries (211 regions). Knowledge from the Framework Programme collaboration networks is measured by the ENQ index, while local knowledge transfer is accounted for by systematic spatial-panel econometric methods. The paper reveals important differences between the two sub-samples: while in the CEE regions network cooperation has a positive influence on regional patenting activity, this knowledge does not seem to be a significant input for innovation activity in Western European regions.

In this research we investigate the potential benefits of investments in industrialization process for sustained growth on fifty six countries with special focus on Middle East and North African Region (MENA). This study applies the varying coefficient production frontier approach, a recently evolving technique that isolates catching up to the frontier (technical efficiency improvement) from shifts in the frontier (technical progress), to analyze the economic performance of developing countries of MENA. The results suggest that total factor productivity (TFP) contributes a minimal amount to the output growth in this region and the frontier estimations results also suggest that these countries do not achieve much progress compared to the rest of the world. However, some of the MENA countries seem to show a better growth performance than that of the averages in each sub period with respect to the rest of MENA.

Despite the growing body of literature concentrating on service innovation, empirical research focusing on measuring its impact, mainly at firm-level, remains scarce. Adopting the perspective that the ability to monitor the service innovation process and to assess its impact is a pre-condition to properly manage it, we conduct a literature review of recent empirical studies on the measurement of service innovation to ascertain our current body of knowledge. We restrict our review to the period covering 2006 to 2014, as previous research has been extensively covered by Adams, Bessant, and Phelps (2006) and concentrate on published empirical academic articles which clearly examine “service innovation” and its impact on performance. Relying on several inclusion and exclusion criteria, thirteen empirical studies were retained and are discussed in this paper. Although this study does not claim to be exhaustive, it shows that knowledge on the relationship between service innovation and performance is limited and that this area of research deserves further scrutiny. We conclude with some avenues for further research, in view of stimulating more research in this promising yet emerging field. / Si bien la literatura centrada en la innovación de servicios ha ido en aumento, la investigación empírica centrada en su impacto, sobre todo en el ámbito empresarial, sigue siendo escasa. Desde la perspectiva de que la capacidad para controlar el proceso de innovación en servicios y la evaluación del impacto son requisitos para su correcta gestión realizamos un análisis de la literatura sobre estudios empíricos recientes acerca de la medida de la innovación en servicios para comprobar nuestros conocimientos actuales. Restringimos este análisis al período entre 2006 y 2014, pues Adams, Bessant y Phelps (2006) ya investigaron ampliamente las etapas anteriores, y nos concentramos en las publicaciones académicas empíricas que examinen de una manera clara la “innovación en servicios” y su impacto en el rendimiento. Conforme a varios criterios de inclusión y exclusión, se seleccionaron trece artículos, los cuales se examinan en este escrito. A pesar de que este estudio no pretende ser exhaustivo, revela que los conocimientos de la relación entre la innovación en servicios y el rendimiento son limitados y que este ámbito merece ser estudiado más a fondo. Concluimos con posibles vías de investigación con el fin de poder estimular más el trabajo sobre este ámbito tan prometedor y emergente.

There are many types of econometric models used in predicting the inflation rate, but in this study we used a the paper explores the possibilities of technology development in terms of globalization. In the beginning the characteristics of globalization are analyzed. These questions are looking for answers which are the basic directions for technology development which influence the choice of business strategy. The basic technology paradigms in terms of globalization, which dictate the technology development, are analyzed there: knowledge, innovations, renewable recourses of energy and information and telecommunication technology. All these categories are presented through the case of the Republic of Macedonia. The goal of the paper is to show that with bigger education, innovations, renewable energy and information technology, Republic Macedonia can survive at the global world market.

The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) and the distribution of rent are central issues in R&D-based growth models with the return to innovation serving as the engine of growth. In this paper we consider the strength of the intellectual property rights and franchise bargaining system to analyze how the rent/franchise fee and institutional quality affect the economic growth and social welfare. It is found that the intermediate goods firm with imperfect IPR protection charges less than the marginal cost. In addition, increasing the IPR protection will increase the rent/franchise fee. We also show that the growth-maximizing effects of IPR protection, the bargaining power of intermediate goods firms, and the imitation of technology are no longer equivalent to those effects on welfare maximization since the welfare result depends on the relative degrees of the growth enhancing effect and crowding-out effect on consumption.

DIW Berlin has examined the effects of investment in research and development on economic growth in Germany and other OECD countries. Their results show that an increase of one percentage point in research and development spending in the economy as a whole leads to a short-term average increase in GDP growth of approximately 0.05 to 0.15 percentage points. The coefficient for Germany is at the upper end of that range. The analysis shows, however, that it is difficult to separate the effect of aggregate R&D into contributions from private- and public sector R&D. R&D investment in both sectors has seen strong growth in Germany in recent years, particularly when compared internationally. For a country that owes its prosperity largely to its research-intensive manufacturing sector and to production-related, knowledge-intensive services, research and development remains key to future growth. It is therefore essential that Germany does not ease up on its efforts to increase R&D investment.

It is widely accepted that firms in peripheral regions benefit to a lesser extent from local knowledge spillovers than firms located in agglomerations or industrial clusters. This paper investigates the extent to which innovative firms in peripheral regions compensate for the lack of access to local knowledge spillovers by collaborating at other geographical scales. So far, the literature predominantly suggests that collaborations complement rather than compensate for local knowledge spillovers. Using data on the collaboration patterns of innovative firms in Sweden, this paper provides evidence that firms with low access to local knowledge spillovers tend to collaborate more. This effect, however, depends on firm size and in-house capabilities. Our findings suggest that firms with strong in-house capabilities do indeed compensate for a lack of local knowledge spillovers with collaborations while firms with weaker in-house capabilities depend more on the regional knowledge infrastructure.

We construct an endogenous growth model that includes a cultural variable along the dimension of individualism-collectivism. The model predicts that more individualism leads to more innovation because of the social rewards associated with innovation in an individualist culture. This cultural effect may offset the negative effects of bad institutions on growth. Collectivism leads to efficiency gains relative to individualism, but these gains are static, unlike the dynamic effect of individualism on growth through innovation. Using genetic data as instruments for culture we provide strong evidence of a causal effect of individualism on income per worker and total factor productivity as well as on innovation. The baseline genetic markers we use are interpreted as proxies for cultural transmission but others have a direct effect on individualism and collectivism, in line with recent advances in biology and neuro-science. The effect of culture on long-run growth remains very robust even after controlling for the effect of institutions and other factors. We also provide evidence of a two-way causal effect between culture and institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on similarity and/or heterogeneity of taxonomies of innovation present in the economic fields to show as the economic literature uses different names to indicate the same type of technical change and innovation, and the same name for different types of innovation. This ambiguity of classification makes it impossible to compare the various studies; moreover the numerous typologies existing in the economics of innovation, technometrics, economics of technical change, management of technology, etc., have hindered the development of knowledge in these fields. The research presents also new directions on the classification of innovation that try to overcome these problems., Comment: 22

We find a negative relationship between bank distress and the level, quality and trajectory of firm-level innovation during the Great Depression, particularly for R&D firms operating in capital intensive industries. However, we also show that because a sufficient number of R&D intensive firms were located in counties with lower levels of bank distress, or were operating in less capital intensive industries, the negative effects were mitigated in aggregate. Although Depression era bank distress was associated with the stifling of innovation, our results also help to explain why technological development was still robust following one of the largest shocks in the history of the U.S. banking system.

Using data for twelve manufacturing industries over the period 1980-2006, we perform for Italy and Spain a dynamic panel estimation of the long-run elasticity of TFP with respect to R&D capital. The results show that in Spain high-tech industries have experienced a similar or slightly higher R&D elasticity than their Italian counterparts. This is mainly attributable to what occurred from the mid 1990s onwards when, thanks to increasing R&D efforts, the Spanish industries have been able to catch up with the respect to the Italian ones. The policy implications of the above findings are discussed.

Using a unique and rich database of high-technology firms in China, we show that effective enforcement of intellectual property rights at the provincial level is critical in encouraging financing and investing in R&D. Better enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights positively affects firms' ability to acquire new external debt and allows firms to invest in more R&D, generate more innovation patents, and produce more sales from new products. Our results suggest that facilitating financing and investing in R&D are the channels through which better IP rights enforcement can affect economic growth. © 2014 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The budgetary implications of an aging population in the OECD are often considered dire. This study argues that this need not be the case provided that older educated workers are more innovative than their younger counterparts and that the workers with tertiary education stay in the labor force until their 60s. In using a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1870–2009, this paper estimates the productivity growth effects of education for different age groups, through the channels of innovation and imitation. The results show that educated workers are highly innovative and that the propensity to innovate increases sharply with age.

Chinese companies have become major technology producers, with the largest share of their output exported. This paper examines the development of solar PV and wind energy technology component (WETC) exports from China and the competitive position of the country`s renewable energy industry. We also describe the government's renewable energy policy and its success in renewable electricity generation as well as increasing renewable energy innovation and foreign knowledge accumulation, which may drive export performance. We aim at empirically identifying determinants of Chinese solar PV and WETC exports. We estimate an augmented gravity trade model using maximum likelihood estimation. Besides controlling for standard variables derived from the gravity literature, we consider additional explanatory factors by accounting for market, policy and innovation effects steaming from both importing countries and China. We use a panel dataset representing annual bilateral trade flows of 43 countries from the developed and developing world that imported solar PV and WETCs from China between 1996 and 2008. The analysis shows that while the national market remained small for solar PV, the industry successfully entered foreign markets. The export performance of firms producing WETC increased but remained relatively small while the country developed a large home market. Empirical results indicate that high income countries, with a large renewable energy market and demand side policy support scheme, in terms of incentive tariffs, are increasingly importing solar PV components from China. We show that trade costs have a negative impact on exports of solar PV components but not WETC. Additionally, we find a positive impact of research and development (R&D) appropriation growth, especially from provincial governments in China, but no evidence that bilateral knowledge transfer and indigenous innovation affect exports.

The paper develops a formal model of external knowledge and identifies the role of knowledge multipliers. Social interactions and knowledge multipliers play a crucial role in the determination of the rate of technological change. The analytical identification of the knowledge multiplier expression constitutes a key step in the appreciation of the crucial role of knowledge interactions. First, social considerations endogenously change the knowledge production function of each firm. The knowledge multiplier is the specific mechanism by means of which external knowledge contributes to enhance the innovative capacity of each firm. The production function of knowledge shows that the knowledge multiplier is larger, the stronger the cumulative positive effects of external knowledge on the generation of new knowledge. Second, social considerations explain the long-run dynamics of innovation. Social reinforcement and the knowledge multiplier determine the rise or fall of the rate of accumulation of technological knowledge.

Inspired by the theory of variety-expanding product innovation we derive a testable relationship of outsourcing on the growth rate of knowledge. We estimate this relationship with a firm-level dataset, which is a unique match of PATSTAT patent data and the Amadeus dataset. We find evidence that forward spillovers are stronger than backward spillovers, where forward spillovers are defined as spillovers going down the value chain from producers to users of intermediate inputs. Moreover, we conclude that inter-industry spillovers are stronger than intra-industry spillovers. This holds when considering only the more important forward spillovers as well as when considering both directions of knowledge flows.

This paper investigates the relationship between geographic patterns of industrial activity and endogenous growth in a two region model of trade that exhibits no scale effect. The in-house process innovation of manufacturing firms drives productivity growth and is closely associated with firm-level scales of production and relative levels of accessible technical knowledge. Focusing on long-run industry shares and a cross-region productivity gap, we find that dispersed equilibria with positive industry shares for both regions always produce higher growth rates than core-periphery equilibria with all industry locating in one region. Moreover, the highest growth rate arises in a symmetric steady state that features no productivity gap and equal shares of industry leading to the conclusion that the geographic concentration of industry has a negative impact on overall growth. Convergence towards a dispersed equilibrium, however, is contingent on the levels of inter-regional transport costs and knowledge dispersion. Finally, we explore the implications of greater economic integration arising from reduced transport costs and greater knowledge dispersion for patterns of industry and productivity, and for regional welfare levels within a dispersed equilibrium.

Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) made the Solovian set up widely used to test the determinants of economic growth and the speed of convergence. In accordance with the nature of the Solow framework, almost all empirical growth studies considered technological progress constant and identical across countries and over time, and hence underemphasized its role. In this study, in order to overcome this weakness, we propose that the Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) set-up should be replaced by the Solovianized Romer (1990) framework, thus allowing the role of technology to be considered in the empirical analysis. In particular, within this framework, the growth rate of technology varies across economies and over time. We estimate the convergence equation derived from Solovianized Romer model for 31 OECD countries for the period 1980–2008 by applying the system GMM approach. The empirical findings of the model support the conditional convergence hypothesis, but reveal a lower convergence rate than that predicted by the existing literature. As a policy implication, we argue that, investment in R&D and human capital are important determinants of convergence, and in cases where economies are unable to allocate sufficient resources to R&D, policy makers should ease the diffusion of technology (e.g., via FDI or trade) in order to retain a high convergence rate.

The article presents the micro data on intangibles for Slovenia during the period 1994–2005 using an augmented method by Corrado et al. and analyses the role of intangibles in the Slovenian economy during the transition. By examining the organisational, information and communication technologies (ICT) and research and development (R&D) component of intangibles, we observe a decrease in the value of R&D capital that was to some extent offset by an increase in the value of ICT capital. We find that organisational workers had higher productivity than the average worker. The dynamic of change was gradual during the transition. The capitalisation of intangibles implied an average 4.5% increase of gross domestic product (GDP) for the new member states. Nonetheless, a worrying convergence can be observed between the tangible and the intangible capital. One can thus expect the intangibles have an important role in the future growth in Slovenia and across the European countries, but only if proper attention is devoted to them in terms of policy measures and regulation.

Comparative studies indicate that innovation activity in Poland is, in general, significantly below that of EU and in North-east it is below that of other parts of Poland. There is peripheral region with traditional structure of production and employment. The North-east remains one of the least innovative regions of Poland and enlarged EU. This is probably the result of the obsolete institutional setting, which doesn’t reflect the requirements of modern international competitiveness. It is the heritage of past times, where creation of the innovation system wasn’t con-sidered a priority factor of economic development. Additionally, Poland is still undergoing intensive modernization of its technology capabilities. The capital and production structure are way outdated and don’t meet the demands of the interna-tional trade competition, most of all the non-price competition. That is why it seems that creating conditions for innovation system might become a crucial factors de-termining the nature and dynamics of development processes as well as influencing the North-east future innovation capability. Creating a new regional innovation structure and transfer of technologies should support modernization processes in companies and the creation of development opportunities for the national economy as a whole and especially in peripheral regions. Those processes will accelerate technological convergence of regions and the economy. The main aim of the article is an analysis of innovation system functioning and institutional support in this process in North-east Poland.

The crisis of 2008 affected in Switzerland primarily export-oriented and innovative firms with an unfavourable cost structure and low labour productivity, independently from firm size, firm age and ownership situation (domestic or foreign firm). This can be traced back to the specific character of this recession that hit the Swiss economy via the exports and the exchange rate. As main determining factors of the crisis have been identified by the firms macroeconomic factors such as “falling prices”, “reduced propensity to consume”, and “exchange rate”. The crisis has of course affected negatively investment. About one fourth to one third of firms reported that they have suspended investment in buildings, equipment and information technology because of the crisis. Less than one fourth of firms reported suspended investment in R&F, innovation and further education of personnel.

En este documento se contrasta la hipótesis modificada de autoselección de empresas formales peruanas haciendo uso de un modelo de datos ordenados, lo que permite caracterizar la elección de las empresas entre tres posibilidades: aquéllas que producen sólo para el mercado interno, las que producen para el mercado interno y para el mercado externo indirectamente vía intermediarios comerciales, y las que producen para el mercado interno y para el mercado externo directamente a través de filiales de distribución establecidas en el exterior. Se encuentra que el ordenamiento para la elección de los modos de exportación se da a través de diferencias en la productividad total de factores.

A 2000-es évek eleje óta az EU pozíciói lassan romlottak a nemzetközi innovációs versenyben, és ugyanez mondható el Magyarországról is. A folyamat mögött részben a gyorsan iparosodó fejlődő országok egy részének a gyors kutatás-fejlesztési-innovációs (K + F + I) felzárkózása áll, részben pedig Európa nemzeti innovációs rendszereinek viszonylag lassú intézményi fejlődése. A relatív európai lemaradás magyarázatára gyakran alkalmazott "európai paradoxon" jelenség azonban módszertani okok miatt nem egyértelmű. Az EU-n belüli, elsősorban a közös forrásokért folytatott K + F + I-versenyben pedig - különösen a jó pályázati teljesítményeknek köszönhetően - az EU-csatlakozás óta nem romlottak a magyar pozíciók. Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kód: F15, I28, O30, O38., The EU s relative performance in the international R + D + I competition has slowly deteriorated since the early 2000s, and the same conclusion can be reached about Hungary as well. The factors behind Europe s relatively poor showing include the fast emergence of innovation sectors in certain developing countries, and rather slow institutional development of national innovation systems (NIS) in most EU countries. The EU s increasing innovation lag is often explained by a so-called European Paradox, but certain methodological problems make such explanations doubtful to some extent. With R+D+I within the EU, Hungary s relatively good fund-raising performance helped the country to retain its competitive positions as a moderate innovator.

Strong competition among entrepreneurs forces them to use innovation as the main source of competitive superiority. Dominating role of innovation – the factor of development - forces individual firms to search for the capability of widest use of innovation in their activity. Innovation is a result of specific process, which links up operations like presenting an idea of innovation and implementation of new solution. Proficient management of implementing the innovation process becomes important in creating innovativeness of the company. In order to be able to compete, firms must introduce new technologies, products, services and organizational systems. Nowadays innovation activity driving at bringing new products, processes, new organizational and marketing methods out is one of the most important conditions of firm market success. The paper discusses the concepts of innovativeness and analyses the theoretical conditions for its development, as well as the existing conditions for innovativeness of industrial enterprises in contemporary Poland. The objective of this paper is an analysis of statistical data (GUS) related to technology transfer of industrial entrepreneurs and its influence on innovativeness of firm. This analysis examines the efficiency of innovation activity in Polish industrial companies.

El presente artículo se basa en una colección de ensayos. Estos describen cómo la convergencia y la aceleración del crecimiento basada en el capital humano y el progreso tecnológico nos pondrán de frente a una singularidad económica, donde la economía dejaría de ser la ciencia de administración de la escasez para convertirse en la ciencia del estudio de la acción humana en un entorno de abundancia radical. Cuantitativamente, si en el Siglo XXI el mundo converge, el PBI per-cápita crecería a una tasa del 4,18%, por lo que éste se multiplicaría 59,1 veces, superando en 4,6 veces los logros de 20 siglos. Si quiere hacerse una idea de lo que hablo, compare nuestro nivel de vida con el de inicios de la Era Cristiana. Luego considere qué sentiría una persona de dicho tiempo si le relatara lo que acontece hoy en nuestro mundo. Ahora, intente racionalizarlo y multiplique esas sensaciones 4,6 veces. Bienvenido a la Singularidad.

Innovation is what we may call the most significant means of changing and rearranging life through research-and-development and production of technology, including the outcomes in economy. Improvements to innovation support rapid change in information production. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to apply innovation management to survive and prosper in this age of information. From this point of view, the research aims to investigate the properties of SMEs in Burdur concerning strategy, innovation and whether they have developed innovation and an effective strategy thus far. Moreover, it aims to ascertain which strategies and innovation types they employ and factors influencing their innovation. We retrieved the data used in this study from the Burdur Commerce and Industry Chamber (BUTSO). We collected data through a survey that tests strategies, innovation types and factors influencing innovation for SMEs in Burdur. The results of the study show that internal and external factors are very important for SMEs. According to another result, process and marketing innovation is applied more frequently than product and organizational innovation in SMEs. Finally, the results of this study indicate that SMEs apply analyzer and defender strategy.

Das digitale Wirtschafsleben ist geprägt von der nahezu täglichen Angabe persönlicher Informationen zu verschiedenen Zwecken. Die Entlohnung dafür findet auf unterschiedliche Weisen statt: durch Preisreduktion, Produkt-Personalisierung oder scheinbar freie Nutzung von Dienstleistungen im Internet, beispielsweise Suchmaschinen. Das Weltwirtschaftsforum in Genf bezeichnet persönliche Informationen bereits als neue Ressource (new asset class). Und auf europäischer Ebene treibt man die Monetarisierung der Privatsphäre voran: So sollen Europäer künftig für ihren Verzicht auf Privatsphäre fairer entlohnt werden. Dabei wird offensichtlich jedoch ignoriert, dass es sich bei der Bewertung von persönlichen Daten durch Individuen um ein diffiziles Entscheidungsproblem handelt, bei dessen Untersuchung die ökonomische Forschung mehr oder weniger am Anfang steht. Sobesteht grundsätzlich die Frage, ob und inwiefern auf Geld basierende Allokationsmechanismen unverzerrte Preise für persönliche Daten erzeugen können. In today's digital economy individuals need to constantly provide personal information for different purposes. The compensation for information disclosure occurs through various ways such as price reductions, product personalization, or the apparently free use of Internet services such as search engines. The World Economic Forum in Geneva has already designated personal information as a new asset class. At the European level, too, the monetization of privacy is being promoted: The European Commission holds that Europeans should be more fairly remunerated for relinquishing their privacy. However, there seems to be some ignorance of the problem that the valuation of personal data by individuals is a complex decision and that economic research is more or less still in its infancy when it comes to analyzing this problem. The fundamental question here is whether and to what extent monetary allocation mechanisms can generate unbiased prices for personal data.

This paper shows that Switzerland is an exception concerning the labour share of national income: it is one of the very few developed countries which, since 1980, display an increasing labour share. Based on evidence from Swiss firms, this study examines the reasons for the persistence of Switzerland’s labour share. We provide four explanations: i) no structural shifts towards industries with below-average labor shares as observed in other developed countries; ii) a slow rate of technical progress; iii) enduring labour shortages; and iv) a comparatively skilled workforce. However, extrapolations extending observed trends in the determinants of the labour share until 2020 indicate that Switzerland’s labour share might decline in the years to come.

This paper examines the productivity growth effects of educational attainment and its interaction with the distance to the world technology frontier, which is the percentage distance to the country with the highest total factor productivity (TFP) (the United Kingdom or United States), while allowing for the endogeneity of educational attainment in some of the estimates. For this purpose, a new annual data set for educational attainment is constructed for 21 industrialized countries over the period from 1870 to 2009. The results show that changes in educational attainment and the interaction between education and the distance to the frontier, as predicted by Schumpeterian growth theory, have been influential for productivity growth over the past 140 years. © 2014 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology