Publications
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PDF Estimating territorial business R&D expenditures using corporate R&D and patent data
This note describes a methodology to estimate territorial business R&D expenditures funded by the business sector, using R&D and patent… Show more data from top R&D investing companies. Since company data are available with a short delay, the aim is to provide timelines estimations for business R&D in anticipation of its publication by official statistics. The estimation is made for worldwide industrial R&D expenditures, breaking down figures for main world regions and focusing on the EU and its top member states. The industrial coverage comprises main innovative industries, focusing on manufacturing and knowledge intensive services. Show less
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Disentangling the processes of firm growth and R&D investment
Headlines Sales growth kick-starts the growth process, having large effects on subsequent growth of capital expenditures, R&D investment, employment and operating… Show more profits. Policy interventions designed to boost business R&D investment should seek to remove the obstacles to firm growth, because it is sales growth that drives R&D investment. If Europe is to have 'smart growth' whereby firms growth occurs alongside investments in R&D and innovation, there is a key role of demand. Show less
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PDF Advanced Manufacturing Activities of Top R&D investors: Geographical and Technological Patterns
This study builds upon and extends results that were obtained in the context of the Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Competitiveness… Show more AMTEC project, in which the technological profiles of the patent portfolios of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard companies were constructed using patent-based analysis. The main questions addressed by this study were (1) In which countries are the most important inventors of AMTs and applicants for AMT-related patents located? (2) Is it possible to analyse internationalisation patterns and knowledge flows between world regions and countries? and (3) Are there any special patterns and clusters between AMT related technological fields and the five core KETs and, if so, which companies are responsible for the development of these technological applications? Show less
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PDF Trademark patterns of top R&D-driven innovators. World Trademark Review, Issue 60, April/May 2016, pp. 19-22
Historically, studies seeking to map innovation levels at the corporate level have focused on the prevalence of patent rights and… Show more other indicators. In recent years, though, a growing number of studies in the field of economics of innovation have paid more attention to trademark-based indicators as a proxy for companies' innovative activities. There are many reasons for this, including trademarks' importance in the commercialisation phase of innovations, their wide use across different sizes of firms and types of industry, their direct links with products and the fact that they can be used to protect innovations that are not always patentable. This note considers trademark activity at industry and company levels and compares the trademarks and R&D activity of the top 20 R&D investors. Further research is needed but the findings confirms the role of trademarks as a key intangible asset in the corporate strategies of R&D-driven innovators. Show less
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PDF A reappraisal of the impact of corporate R&D and innovation on employment
The aim of this report is to provide updated quantitative and qualitative analyses of the impact of corporate R&D and… Show more innovation on employment in industries and firms in the European Union member states. Over the last decades, the paradigm based on ICT and automation has led to a dramatic adjustment of the employment structure raising again a widespread fear of an upcoming "technological employment". After a critical survey of the more updated empirical evidence on the topic, new econometric analyses (longitudinal data), based on a dynamic labour demand, are provided. The first one is at the sectoral-level and uses OECD STAN-ANBERD data; the second one is at firm-level and uses European R&D top-performers Scoreboard data. In addition, two microeconometric studies, based, respectively, on Italian and Spanish firm-level data, are provided. Finally, in order to offer evidence of the "qualitative" impact of innovation, a tentative study matching, at the sectoral-level, OECD STAN-ANBERD and EU-SILC data, has been provided. Overall, R&D seems to have a positive and significant impact on employment, especially in high-tech industries. Moreover, R&D positively affects the categories of tertiary educated workers, high-skilled white-collars and the employees handling non-routinized tasks. Show less
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PDF The Distribution of Technological Activities in Europe: A Regional Perspective
This study analyses the major patterns and trends in the spatial distribution of technological capacities in the EU area over… Show more the 1996-2011 period, adopting a regional perspective. More specifically, the study aims at: a) assessing the level of technological polarization in the EU area and its dynamics; b) highlighting major changes in the patterns of technological specialization of EU regions; c) identifying the technological trajectories that have been more effective, that is able to sustain long-term economic growth and facilitate catching-up processes of EU laggard regions. Show less
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My First Employee: An Empirical Investigation. Small Business Economics, forthcoming. DOI:10.1007/s11187-016-9748-3
The challenge for solo entrepreneurs to add their first employee is arguably the single biggest growth event facing any growing… Show more firm. To understand how this event affects performance, and the antecedents of hiring, we analyse Danish matched employer–employee data. Those who hire enjoy superior sales outcomes in subsequent years, while the dispersion in profits increases. Furthermore, those that hire enjoy faster sales growth in the previous year, suggesting that sales growth precedes the first hire. Finally, we show that founders with a stronger profile in terms of education and previous income are more likely to increase profits, while the characteristics of the employee are less important. The latter finding is important from a job creation perspective, in light of the suggested sorting of more marginalized employees into new and established firms. Show less
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PDF Study on tools for causal inference from cross-sectional innovation surveys with continuous or discrete variables
Dominik Janzing, from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, recently finished a subcontracted report entitled "Tools for causal inference… Show more from cross-sectional innovation surveys with continuous or discrete variables." The machine learning community has recently developed some exciting new techniques for causal inference from observational data, which work even for discrete variables. In this project, Dominik applied these techniques to analyse Scoreboard data (on the world's largest R&D investors) as well as Community Innovation Survey data. The report contains a large number of results, and also makes the software available for future research. Show less
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PDF Top R&D investors' location decisions: How to succeed in the global regulatory contest?
Headlines Product regulation policies and employment policies show strong combined effects on decisions regarding top R&D investment locations. The higher… Show more the level of product market regulation (PMR), the higher the negative effect of employment protection legislation (EPL), and vice-versa. Reforms in these two policy areas should therefore be coordinated to be more efficient. Scientific evidence suggests a threshold of product regulation above which existing employment policies can start deterring investment decisions. Some Member States would particularly benefit from diminishing current levels of product regulation. Lowering barriers to trade and investment is more effective for attracting knowledge-intensive foreign investment than reducing the cost of starting a business or deducing the corporate income tax rate. Show less
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Innovation and firm growth: Does firm age play a role? Research Policy, Vol. 45, pp. 387– 400. DOI:10.1016/j.respol.2015.10.015
This paper explores the relationship between innovation and firm growth for firms of different ages. We hypothesize that young firms… Show more undertake riskier innovation activities which may have greater performance benefits (if successful), or greater losses (if unsuccessful). Using an extensive Spanish Community Innovation Survey sample for the period 2004–2012, we apply panel quantile regressions to study the effect of R&D activities on firm growth (i.e. sales growth, productivity growth and employment growth). Our results show that young firms face larger performance benefits from R&D at the upper quantiles of the growth rate distribution, but face larger decline at the lower quantiles. R&D investment by young firms therefore appears to significantly riskier than R&D investment by more mature firms, which suggests some policy implications. Show less