Search

Although evolutionary economics has extensively analyzed the evolution of industries in relation to innovation and technology lifecycles, the interplay between industry lifecycles and evolutionary patterns of knowledge networks has not been fully explored yet. This work aims to bridge this gap by analyzing the co-evolutionary patterns of knowledge and trade flows in the mining industry, using social network tools in combination with the Schumpeterian tradition of analysis. The study focuses on three Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, and Peru, where the mining sector plays a significant role in the economy, particularly in the context of energy and digital transitions. Our findings suggest that the innovation network and the global value chain-trade network display divergent co-evolutionary patterns; while the former tends to be stable and concentrated, the latter shows increasing fragmentation and turbulence. The analysis also shows remarkable evolutionary evidence at the country level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent economics of knowledge studies have highlighted the strong positive effects that the limited exhaustibility of knowledge and its cumulability exert on the recombinant generation of new technological knowledge. While existing empirical investigations primarily focus on the knowledge generation and technology production functions, the analysis of the cost of knowledge has received less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the dynamics and determinants of patent costs in the European Union in the period 1992–2012. The analysis of patent unit costs in European countries, measured as the amount of research and development (R&D) expenditure per patent application to the European Patent Office (EPO), shows a steady decline and clear convergence toward lower levels, both in time and across countries. We find that a larger stock of patents and a higher technological variety and coherence of its composition are associated with a sharper reduction in patent costs. Our findings suggest that, in Europe, ideas have been getting cheaper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether regions' participation to the global network of embodied R&D (GNRD) facilitates their technological diversification. Filling a gap about the role of global research and development (R&D) networks, we maintain that by patenting in pivotal GNRD industries, regions become more exposed to global knowledge and increase their capacity to diversify also in technologies less cognitively related to pre-existing ones. Using novel GNRD data, we test this using a panel (2004–19) of NUTS-2 regions for the EU-13. GNRD regional exposure positively correlates with technological diversification, mainly at the intensive margin. A higher exposure makes technological diversification less related to existing technologies, though the relationship is non-linear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of strategic technological alliances and environmental regulation, and their interaction, on the generation of green technologies. The empirical analysis is carried out on a newly constructed dataset of European firms over the period 2005–2011 and it is articulated in two steps. Firstly, we test the existence of a relationship between the environmental regulation, as measured by the OECD Environmental Policy Stringency index, and GTs, proxied by patent applications. We then employ a dynamic network analysis model to explore the dual role of GTs both as the determinant of the collaboration network and as the outcome of firms' collaboration strategies. We find that, even though there exists a strong and positive relationship, the regulatory framework has not a direct effect on GTs but rather it stimulates firms to search for new and qualified collaborations. Then, it is the nature and the structure of these collaborations that encourages firms to generate new green technological knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]