Publications
-
List item
PDF Measuring the internationalisation of EU corporate R&D: a novel complementary use of statistical sources
The report summarises the main results of a research activity aimed at testing a novel approach for the measurement of… Show more EU business R&D internationalisation. Such approach is based on the complementary use of two different sources of data: on the one hand, statistical data from private R&D expenditure taken from national surveys (BERD); on the other hand, data collected from companies' annual reports and accounts (as in the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard). The main objectives of the study were: To explore the methodological rationale for comparing the two sets of data; To test the robustness of the novel methodology through an analysis applied to four EU countries (Belgium, Finland, Germany and Italy); To provide indications of possible further research and follow up activities. Show less
-
List item
PDF New insights on EU-US comparison of corporate R&D
This paper focuses on the main differences between the EU and the US in corporate R&D performance, especially in the… Show more following three main aspects: (i) dynamics of the economic structures and the cause of the R&D intensity gap; (ii) R&D performance and company demographics and (iii) financial availability and corporate R&D investment. Show less
-
List item
PDF Drivers and policies for increasing and internationalising R&D activities of EU MNEs
This paper aims at investigating in a quantitative way the main factors explaining: (i) the decision of firms to increase… Show more their R&D investment effort in the near future; (ii) the main drivers explaining the favourite international location choice for R&D; and (iii) the impact of direct and indirect policies to support R&D activities in the EU. Show less
-
List item
PDF The job creation effect of R&D expenditures
This paper using a unique database covering 25 manufacturing and service sectors for 15 European countries over the period 1996-2005,… Show more for a total of 2,295 observations, and apply GMM-SYS panel estimations of a demand-for-labour equation augmented with technology investigates the impact fo R&D expenditures on job-creating effects. Show less
-
List item
PDF Profits, R&D and Innovation: a Model and a Test
This paper aims at investigating in a quantitative way the main factors explaining: (i) the decision to engage in R&D… Show more activities; (ii) the innovation performance; and (iii) the determinants of profits. We found a postive effect of past profits of R&D investment, an overall significant role of demand in economic performance and a negative effect of the distance from the technological frontier in explaining R&D investment. Moreover, we argue that innovative activity is more complex than pure research. Show less
-
List item
PDF The More You Spend, the More You Get? The Effects of R&D and Capital Expenditures on the Patenting Activities of Biotechnology Firms
This paper aims at investigating in a quantitative way the main factors influencing the patent output of a sample of… Show more European and non-European biotechnology firms. Statistical models for count data are used to analyze the role exerted by the input of indirect knowledge acquired from capital expenditures and direct knowledge from in-house R&D. Results demonstrate that R&D and capital expenditures are complementary forces and determinants in the overall innovation process. Show less
-
List item
PDF Young Leading Innovators and EU's R&D intensity gap
The difference in industrial structures explains most of the EU's aggregate corporate R&D intensity gap with the US. Increasing the… Show more number of large European companies in high R&D intensity sectors would help to reach the overall EU R&D intensity targets. Bringing the age of the Scoreboard companies as an additional variable in this comparative analysis provides additional interesting insights concerning the origin of EU's R&D intensity gap. Younger companies (i.e. those created from 1975 onwards) show higher R&D intensity than the older ones and are more numerous in the US than in the EU. Moreover, the younger companies based in the EU are less R&D intensive than their US counterparts. Altogether these factors explain to a large extent the overall lower R&D intensity of the EU companies. Additional analysis on the factors behind these differences in structure and in company dynamics between the EU and the US might help to identify targeted policy measures aimed at boosting R&D corporate investment levels in Europe. Show less
-
List item
PDF Innovation and Employment: A firm level analysis with European R&D Scoreboard data
The article addresses the effect of R&D on employment at firm level. We derive a reduced form labour demand where… Show more R&D expenditures enter in a non linear form. We estimate it using company data from R&D Scoreboard covering 2000-2008. The use of panel data technique allows addressing the causality issue. The main findings can be summarized as follows. Our results confirm that R&D and innovation have positive employment impact at firm level. This impact varies according to how much the firm invests and also to its size, in terms of sales. The main implication is that the positive job creation effect increases when the R&D intensity of the firm increases. The policy implications of the results are the following ones: a) Policy simulations should include a proper calibration of the R&D employment elasticity. Since this appears to be non constant, then taking the average value can generate non robust predictions; b) Policy oriented towards the entrance of new R&D intensive firms are welcome for both their labour market effect and the competition effect they generate on existing big players. Show less
-
List item
PDF What is small? Small and medium enterprises facing patenting activities
In this paper the effect of firm's size is analyzed in relation with the probability to apply for a patent.… Show more We work on the identification of a minimal firm's size, a threshold, needed to formally protect an innovation by a legal mean. Below this minimal size the costs associated to the protection will be so high that firms will prefer informal protection of their innovations. This paper shows some empirical evidence that at the international level the effect of size is very different from one country to the other. It shows that the size effect disappears and does not seem to be an issue for big firms. It points to a critical size need to become an active user of patents. This critical size varies very much from one country to the other. Therefore not only policies should be designed with different target across countries but the EU should provide the means to make the innovation protection accessible to all firms in all the EU countries. Show less