Publications
-
-
List item
Do firms publish? A multi-sectoral analysis
We examine corporate publishing - i.e. firms' involvement in the production of scientific publications - with two research questions. First,… Show more why do firms publish? Through systematic literature review, we propose a framework of five incentives for firms to publish: (i) accessing external knowledge and resources; (ii) attracting and retaining researchers; (iii) signalling and reputation building; (iv) supporting IP strategies; and (v) supporting commercialization strategies. Second, how does firms' engagement in publishing differ across sectors? Variation in corporate publishing has not yet been comprehensively characterized in the literature. We present an empirical analysis of the publication activity of a global sample of 2,500 firms (and the 570,000 directly owned subsidiaries of these firms) operating in 20 industrial sectors. We find that corporate publishing is widespread, though considerable heterogeneity exists within and between sectors. Most firms (84%) in our sample contributed to at least one publication from 2011 to 2015. The number of firms' publications grew over the observation period (2.3% on a yearly basis), though not as fast as the global science output in general. Firms' publications are often co-authored with researchers at academic institutions (58%) and are cited more than expected (about 12% of firms' articles are within the top 10% most cited articles). We conclude by proposing a taxonomy of sectors based on their R&D investment intensity and publication activity. Show less
-
List item
From R&D to market: using trademarks to capture the market capability of top R&D investors
This paper investigates the links between the market capability of top corporate R&D investors (EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboards), as… Show more captured by trademark data and their economic performance in terms of net sales growth. It provides empirical evidence to better understand the extent to which companies, operating in different industrial sectors, combine technological capabilities with commercialization efforts to generate and appropriate the economic returns of their R&D investments. This paper shows how different dimensions of firms' market capabilities can be captured through trademark indicators. The results suggest that complementing R&D efforts and patenting activities with strong and specific market capabilities can indeed yield significant growth premiums. Moreover, offering services seems to pay off depending on the intensity of R&D investments. Yet, a quantile regression approach and a series of robustness checks indicate that such effects differ across the quantiles of the conditional sales growth distribution. Show less
-
List item
Inward greenfield FDI and patterns of job polarization
The unprecedented growth in FDI in the last decades has caused drastic changes in the labour markets of the host… Show more countries. The major part of FDI takes place in low tech industries, where the wages and skills are low, or in high tech, where they offer a wage premium for the highly skilled workers. This mechanism may increase the polarization of employment into high-wage and low-wage jobs, at the expenses of middle-skill jobs. This paper looks at the effects of two types of FDI inflows, namely foreign investment in high-skill and low-skill activities, on skill polarization. We match data on greenfield FDI aggregated by country and sector with data on employment by occupational skill to investigate the extent to which differ types of greenfield FDI are responsible for skill polarization. Show less
-
List item
Explaining Growth Differences across Firms: The Interplay between Innovation and Management Practices
This paper provides first empirical evidence of the joint effects that innovation strategies and human resource management practices exert on… Show more firm growth. By exploiting unique information from a large sample of Italian manufacturing companies in the very recent years, it shows that investing in technology and implementing performance-based pay policies are both positively associated with a significant turnover, employment and labor productivity growth premium. However, their joint adoption does not necessarily sum the two effects. In particular, performance-based rewards boost growth of non-innovators and of firms pursuing relatively simple innovation strategies, centered around the acquisition of embodied technology. For firms strongly relying on R&D as an additional lever for product and process upgrading, the estimated effect of having in place monetary incentive mechanisms is null or even negative. Show less
-
List item
PDF The 2018 EU Survey on Industrial R&D Investment Trends
The 142 EU companies participating in the EU Survey on Industrial R&D Investment Trends expect R&D investment to increase by… Show more 5.4% per annum in 2018 and 2019. This is higher than last year's expectation (4.7%) and indeed the highest expected increase since the pre-crisis years (2007). Companies in the ‘ICT Producers' and ‘Automobile and Other Transport' sector groups expect their R&D to increase the most. These top EU R&D performers expect their R&D within the EU to increase by 4.5% p.a., while their R&D in China and India is expected to show double digit growth (+21.3% and +11.2% respectively). The proportion of R&D investment by EU firms within the EU shows a stable trend since 2006 (at around three-quarters), not showing signs of erosion or offshoring to other regions. In absolute terms, R&D investment levels are higher than ever in the EU. EU firms are increasingly becoming truly global in their R&D activities. In the 2006 survey, only about 15% of EU firms performed R&D in the main world regions. This figure has been constantly increasing, now representing 33% of all participating firms. This confirms both the increasingly global character of R&D and the growing need for top R&D investors to be present in the main R&D locations around the world. China is expected to become the third largest region for the location of R&D activities by EU firms by 2019, after the EU and the US. The proportion of R&D investment by EU firms performed in China is expected to grow to 3.4% in 2019 (from 2.6% in 2017). Since the start of the survey, the third largest region has been the Rest of the World. However, China and India show consistently high growth expectations in all editions of the survey, indicating interesting developments in these countries that are attracting the attention of the EU's main R&D performers. As in all previous surveys, low labour costs for researchers prove not to be an important factor of attractiveness in locating R&D activities. However, there is an important caveat to this finding: firms performing R&D in China or India rate low labour costs as much more important than firms without R&D activities in these countries. Also, companies that perform R&D in many countries rate this factor as much more important than firms performing R&D in only one or a few countries. India is gaining strength as a popular R&D location and is currently second after the US. Firms that perform R&D only in the EU rate the proximity to other activities within the company and the quality of public research as highly important for their location of R&D activities. Firms with R&D activities in the US rate the proximity to suppliers and access to specialised R&D knowledge much higher than firms without R&D activities in the US. The quality of researchers is a factor that is rated consistently highly by firms with R&D activities in the EU only, or that focus on either the US or on China or India, which implies that frontier research is geographically dispersed to all regions. The most highly rated factors for locating production by EU only firms are macroeconomic stability, access to its production infrastructure and quality of personnel. Overall, the factors most often rated as (highly) attractive by firms are access to markets, quality and availability of personnel and macroeconomic stability. Low labour costs are perceived as much more important by firms that produce in China or India than firms that do not. China, Brazil, Italy and Russia remain the countries more frequently mentioned as a production location, as in last year's survey. Access to markets is an important factor for locating production activities in China or India, but not R&D. The average non-R&D expenditure of the respondents is €54 million: 29% of their R&D expenditure or a non-R&D intensity (non-R&D expenditure over net sales) of 0.5%. Firms invest mainly in applied research activities, rather than basic research. This finding is consistent over many editions of the survey and suggests that the European Innovation system has to rely on other actors (i.e. universities and public research institutes, but also start-ups and disruptive companies) for investment in basic research. The main motivation for firms to allow their employees to publish articles in scientific journals is to build the firm's reputation. This helps them to send out a message to two types of audience: venture capital funds (that may be interested in investing in a firm where relevant scientific work is produced) and other talented scientists (who may be interested in working in a scientifically stimulating environment). However, strong differences emerge when comparing firms with high publishing output to those with low output. Companies do not specifically ask for less regulation, but ask for it to be simplified. When asked what public policies should be implemented to boost private R&D and innovation activities, firms call on public authorities to complement their own action through funding research projects and increasing public-private cooperation. Show less
-
List item
PDF The 2018 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard
The 2018 edition of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard) comprises the 2500 companies investing the largest sums… Show more in R&D in the world in 2017/18. These companies, based in 46 countries, each invested over €25 million in R&D for a total of €736.4bn which is approximately 90% of the world's business-funded R&D. They include 577 EU companies accounting for 27% of the total, 778 US companies for 37%, 339 Japanese companies for 14%, 438 Chinese for 10% and 368 from the rest-of-the-world (RoW) for 12%. Show less
-
List item
Innovation and Industry: Policy for the next decade
This document contributes to the discussion on the post-2020 policies that will start with the next EU multiannual financial perspectives… Show more and the subsequent preparation of the ninth Framework Programme (FP9). We identify seven major challenges posed by the industrial transformation. These challenges will shape the future economic landscape and should be at the heart of the next generation policies. Four main ingredients are proposed for future EU policies: they should i) be based on (truly) new policy vision, aims and objectives; ii) promote coordination, simplification and openness; iii) target EU specificities; and iv) embody experimentation. Show less
-
List item
PDF The impact of multinational R&D spending firms on job polarization and mobility
This report analyses the role of multinational R&D intensive firms in job polarization. It also investigates how these firms affect… Show more the labour market in terms of wage growth and labour mobility. Firms appearing on the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard account for a significant share of economic activity in Denmark measured by employment, innovation activity, and R&D expenditures. Domestic firms listed on the scoreboard are the largest and most innovative, but subsidiaries of foreign scoreboard firms are still larger and more innovative compared to non-scoreboard firms. Relying on information from register data the report demonstrates that R&D spending among scoreboard firms is a complement to high skill jobs, while it substitutes low skill jobs. Thus, scoreboard firms are more involved in upgrading than polarization. Organisational change has an effect similar to that of R&D, while there is indication that innovation is a complement for low skilled jobs. Labour flows, particularly of high skilled workers, are stronger among scoreboard firms than between scoreboard firms and other firms. Thus, labour flows in networks instead of appearing in labour market pools, and non-scoreboard firms are kept out of the "knowledge spill-over" loops, providing them with fewer opportunities to learn from the scoreboard firms. Show less
-
List item
PDF Smart Specialisation, seizing new industrial opportunities
This study offers a novel analytical approach to inform the regional search for new industrial opportunities, as promoted by Smart… Show more Specialisation within the EU Cohesion policy context. The analysis departs from the challenges of practicing Smart Specialisation and its entrepreneurial discovery process in a dynamic perspective. It argues that the adoption of a dynamic approach to identify new opportunities implies mapping regional business and innovation assets as well as, assessing their position within the global technological and industrial landscape. The report brings a case study of the Lombardy region business environment, spurring from the S3 Lab initiative (in collaboration with Baden-Württemberg, Catalonia and Lapland), together with a comparative analysis focusing on technological development. The empirical study combines patent data from OECD REGPAT and territorial proprietary micro-data from Lombardy region on firm creation in emerging industries (EI) – new industrial sectors or existing sectors evolving into new industries (European Cluster Observatory). These industries represent a priority area for Lombardy's innovation-led development strategy. The initial observations confirm the importance of such industries in the region; they represent more than one-third of employment, almost a half of the regional value-added and feature together the majority of innovative start-ups, suggesting the relevance of the regional strategic development choices. Also, in terms of productive advantages, Lombardy ranks high in some key EI. The mapping of technological competences through patent indicators measuring specialisation, diversification and the ability to specialise in fast-growing and niche fields gives relevant insights on the technological potential of the region, providing further guidance for better targeted interventions. Show less