Publications
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PDF Do KIBS make manufacturing more innovative? An empirical investigation for four European countries
The paper aims at estimating the innovation impact of the vertical integration of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) into manufacturing.… Show more By referring to the vertically integrated sectors of an economy, the innovative knowledge, which is transferred directly and indirectly from KIBS to manufacturing in an embodied way, is measured. Its impact on manufacturing innovation is then estimated. By merging OECD data on sectoral R&D and input-output tables with sectoral patent applications from the Pastat dataset, a panel of 18 manufacturing sectors is built up for the 4 largest European countries – France, Germany, Italy and UK – spanning from the mid-90s to the mid-00s. The more innovative sectors are actually those making more intensive and extensive use of R&D embodied into KIBS production flows. In policy terms, strengthening the bridge between KIBS and manufacturing appears as crucial as supporting KIBS activities and service innovations as such. Show less
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PDF The 2013 Survey on R&D Investment Business Trends
This report presents the findings of the eigth survey on trends in industrial R&D investment. It analyses the 172 responses… Show more of mainly large firms from a subsample of 1000 EU-based companies in the 2012 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. These 172 companies are responsible for R&D investment worth € 62 billion, constituting around 41% of the total R&D investment by the 1000 EU Scoreboard companies. The main findings are as follows: The main conclusion is that, between 2013-15, the responding companies expect to increase their R&D investments by 2.6 % on average per year. Due to decreased expectations in the automobiles & parts sector, this is a third lower than in the previous survey. For some sectors, the expected R&D investment changes have increased compared to our previous surveys: electronic & electrical equipment (9 % p.a. over the next three years), general industrials (7 %), construction & materials (7 %), pharmaceuticals & biotechnology (4 %), and technology hardware & equipment (4 %). The responding companies carry out a quarter of their R&D outside the EU. Their expectations for R&D investment for the next three years show continued participation of European companies in the global economy, in particular growth opportunities in emerging economies, while maintaining an R&D focus in the EU. Two thirds of the European companies in the sample chose their home country as the most attractive location for R&D, and identified the US, Germany, China and India as the most attractive locations outside their home country. Knowledge-sharing, human resources, proximity to other company sites and market demand make countries attractive for R&D activities. Comparing the attractiveness for R&D activities of the surveyed companies among eight EU countries, quality of R&D personnel and knowledge-sharing opportunities with universities and public organisations are most frequently stated among the top three. Comparing the attractiveness of the EU to the US, geographic proximity is leading before knowledge sharing opportunities and R&D personnel. Comparing the attractiveness of the EU to the one of China and India, for the EU geographic proximity to other company sites and technology poles & incubators is a factor for attractiveness. For China and India proximity to suppliers is making these countries attractive. Show less
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PDF The 2013 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard
The 2013 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard) contains economic and financial data for the world's top 2000 companies… Show more ranked by their investments in research and development (R&D). The sample contains 527 companies based in the EU and 1473 companies based elsewhere. The Scoreboard data are drawn from the latest available companies' accounts, i.e. usually the fiscal year 2012. Show less
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PDF Bridging ideas with markets: the impact of training, marketing and design on innovation
This Policy Brief presents recent results on the impact of training, marketing and design expenditures on European firms' innovative performance.… Show more The new evidence drawn from recent JRC research suggests that these expenditures, in combination with R&D, are crucial drivers of innovation. Drawing on these results, policy implications for the European Research and Innovation Agenda are discussed and additional research questions identified. Show less
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PDF Research cooperation within and across regional boundaries. Does innovation policy add anything?
The paper aims to show how policy makers can stimulate firms' cooperation with research organisations in innovation. We argue that… Show more the administration of an R&D subsidy can be effective. Furthermore, this should be more so for extra-regional than intra-regional cooperation. The firms' propensity to extend cooperation across the region is assumed to increase with the amount of support. However, the support must overcome a threshold, for firms to cover the fixed costs of distant interactions. These research hypotheses are tested with respect to a sample of firms in a region of Italy. Propensity score matching is applied to identify the impact of the subsidy receipt. A generalised propensity score technique is employed to investigate the effect of an increasing amount of support. All the hypotheses are not rejected. Firms' cooperation is policy sensitive, but the size of the support is crucial for its effects. Show less
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PDF Does size or age of innovative firms affect their growth persistence? Evidence from a panel of innovative Spanish firms
This study examines serial correlation in employment, sales and innovative sales growth rates in a balanced panel of 3,300 Spanish… Show more firms over the years 2002-2009, obtained by matching different waves of the Spanish Encuesta sobre Innovacion en las Empresas, the Spanish innovation survey conducted annually by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE). The main objective is to verify whether the changes (increase/decrease) in these figures are persistent over time, whether such persistence (if any) differs between SMEs and larger firms, and if it is affected by a firm's age. To do so, we adopted a semi-parametric quantile regression approach. This methodology is well suited to cases where outliers (high-growth firms) are the subject of investigation and/or when they have to be assumed as being very heterogeneous. Empirical results indicate that among those innovative firms experiencing high employment growth, the smaller and younger grow faster than larger firms, but the jobs they create are not persistent over time. However, while being smaller and younger helps growing more in terms of employment and sales, it is not an advantage when innovative sales growth is considered: in this case larger firms experience faster growth. Show less
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PDF To what extent are knowledge-intensive business services contributing to manufacturing? A subsystem analysis
The rise of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) may be considered as one of the decisive trends of economic evolution of… Show more industrialised countries in recent decades. This paper uses the concept of vertical integrated sectors and the subsystem approach to input-output matrix analysis to study the vertical integration of knowledge-based business services into manufacturing sectors. The study covers Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom over the period 1995-2005. Results decisively support both the existence of structural differences among the countries considered, and a significant heterogeneity to the extent to which manufacturing outsources to knowledge-intensive business services. Show less
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PDF Projection of R&D Intensive Enterprises' Growth to the year 2020: Implications for EU policy?
The paper investigates how sector composition and magnitude of R&D investments in the EU may differ in year 2020 if… Show more top R&D-investing SMEs were assumed to be on a fast growth track while the top R&D-investing large companies continued to grow as before. Background is the emerging focus on SMEs - and in particular the fast growing among them - with regard to the "Europe 2020" policy strategy. Show less
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PDF The 2012 Survey on R&D Investment Business Trends
The report contains the main findings of the seventh survey on R&D investment business trends based on 187 responses of… Show more mainly large companies from the 1000 EU-based companies in the 2011 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. These 187 companies are responsible for R&D investment worth almost €56 billion, constituting around 40% of the total R&D investment of the 1000 EU Scoreboard companies. The main findings are as follows: Companies expect to maintain robust R&D investment increases (average 4% p.a.) over the next three years. These expectations indicate a positive and stable trend for R&D investment growth as observed before the 2008 economic and financial crises. The responding companies report significant shares of sales coming from innovative products and services introduced in the past three years: from 33% to 10% in high and low R&D intensity sectors respectively.The average share of sales coming from new innovative products and services was 18%. Almost half of the respondents named themselves as the innovation leader in the sector. R&D within the company is the most important component of innovation, followed by market research related activities for new product introduction. Collaboration agreements were a more important way of knowledge sharing than licencing. For the impact of factors and policies on the company's innovation activities, national public support had the most positive effect. Labour costs and conditions of Intellectual Property Rights (enforcement, time and costs) continue to be perceived as negative factors for company innovations. This underlines the importance of an efficient IPR regime for the support of company innovations. The majority of R&D collaboration agreements with other companies are with customers or suppliers (vertical agreements), while less than 10% are made with competitors. More than one fifth of the respondents preferred Germany as the most attractive location for outsourcing R&D, mostly because of a very high share of statements from the home country, followed closely by the US. The US is the most attractive source of Intellectual Property Rights, followed by Germany. Among the types of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) licencing, licencing-in ranges before licencing-out. Favourable tax treatment of licencing revenue would encourage more licencing activity. High R&D intensive companies report the highest licencing-in expenditure and licencing-out revenues. Show less
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PDF Absorptive capacity, innovation cooperation and human-capital. Evidence from 3 European countries
The paper aims at extending the analysis of the firm's absorptive capacity (AC) by taking stock of its manifold nature.… Show more Innovation cooperation is recognised as one of its antecedents, along with R&D, but with different possible outcomes, depending on the kind of partner. Human capital is claimed to be as important as other organisational mechanisms for the AC impact on innovation. The empirical application, carried out on about 10,500 firms located in 3 EU countries (i.e. Germany, Italy and Spain), confirms the role of these factors. Interacting with research organisations, for example, increases the firm's AC providing it occurs within the national boundaries. The transformation of AC into actual innovation is favoured by the human capital of the firm, while it is actually hampered by socialisation mechanisms of an organisational nature. Show less