Publications
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PDF Globalisation, industrial diversification and productivity growth in large European R&D companies
This paper aims to assess the impact of both geographic and industrial diversification of economic activities on the productivity performance… Show more of large European R&D Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). Based on the worldwide subsidiaries of these firms, we measure the performance of the firms according to their level of industrial diversification and globalisation that we proxy with the presence and importance of subsidiaries in the EU, North America and Asia-Pacific regions. The sample consists of large R&D firms that represent about 80% of total European R&D. In general, the results indicate a positive impact from globalisation on firms' R&D productivity, especially in the US, while a negative impact for industrial diversification is found. Show less
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PDF Companies' growth in the EU: What is research and innovation policy's role?
Based on a thorough literature survey, this work builds a strong case for targeted policy interventions to support the growth… Show more of innovative companies. The analysis argue that such targeted support should take into consideration a combination of factors to define eligibility and identify types or groups of companies to be supported, such as: size, age, innovativeness, sector, business phase, country techno-economic characteristics and degree of internationalisation. Once identified relevant target groups, the specific support measures should be tailored accordingly. Finally, the paper claims that, to be effective, the design and implementation of measures, should be subject to systematic monitoring and analysis, including policy experimentation. Show less
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PDF Job creation in business services: innovation, demand, polarisation
The patterns and mechanisms of job creation in business services are investigated in this article by considering the role of… Show more innovation, demand, wages and the composition of employment by professional groups. A model is developed and an empirical test is carried out with parallel analyses on a group of selected business services, on other services and on manufacturing sectors, considering six major European countries over the period 1996-2007. Within technological activities, a distinction is made between those supporting either technological competitiveness, or cost competitiveness. Demand variables allow identifying the special role of intermediate demand. Job creation in business services appears to be driven by efforts to expand technological competitiveness and by the fast growing intermediate demand coming from other industries; conversely, process innovation leads to job losses and wage growth has a negative effect that is lower than in other industries. Business services show an increasingly polarised employment structure. Show less
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PDF Access to Finance for Innovation: The Role of Venture Capital and the Stock Market
Financial constraints for young and small firms can prevent them from supporting innovation and employment creation. We analyze two of… Show more the various institutional mechanisms which have been proposed to circumvent it: the development of venture capital market and the stock market access. We will use the information provided by two Scoreboards - used to monitor innovative activity in Europe: the Innovation Union Scoreboard and the R&D Scoreboard. With the first, we study the determinants of the venture capital/GDP intensity in Europe. With the second, we try to assess the contribution of stock market to R&D investment. In the first part, we show that venture capital market complements structural feature such as R&D intensity and market capitalization, is more volatile and seems not affected by anticompetitive regulations. In the second part, we show that unlisted SMEs are more research intensive. Show less
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PDF Intangible resources: the relevance of training for European firms' innovative performance
This paper assesses whether European firms' innovative performance is impacted by investments in training directly aimed at developing and/or introducing… Show more innovation, in addition to the scale of a firm's investments in innovation proxied by the number of R&D personnels. In particular, it explores the complementarity between these two factors (in the presence of a well-trained workforce, the knowledge created by a firm's R&D personnel can be better exploited), and their dependence on a firm's knowledge intensity (high versus low % of tertiary-educated workforce) and size (SMEs versus large firms). Using European CIS non-anonymised data for the period 1998-2000, this paper estimates a system of simultaneous equations in which investments in training and stock of R&D personnel are treated as endogenous in relation to the innovative sales on which they are presumed to have an effect. The choice to use this time period rather than more recent ones – to which I had access at the Eurostat Safe Centre – is data-driven. It has better information on training expenditures and it is the last period to provide firm-level information on the number of employees with tertiary education. Unlike the majority of CIS-based studies, the main variables of interest are continuous ones, while dummy variables are used as controls only. Empirical evidence confirms most previous results – investment in training and stock of R&D personnel positively affects firms' innovativeness – but also provides some important additional insights. Ceteris paribus, returns to training and R&D personnel are not affected by the knowledge intensity of the firm, while are always statistically significantly higher in large than in small and medium sized firms. However, while in the case of training the differences in returns between SME and large firms are small, in the case of R&D personnel are quite pronounced. Show less
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PDF The European Research Framework Programme and innovation performance of companies. An empirical impact assessment using a CDM model.
The effect of the EU Research Framework Programme (FP) on European company innovation performance is analysed for the period 1998-2000.… Show more The possibility of applying for the grant might make companies engage in new projects which they would not have considered if the fund was not there. In addition, the FP programme increases collaboration with other innovation agents (e.g., universities, research labs, governments and other firms). Both the existence of FP and collaboration are simultaneously modelled when innovation performance is studied. To measure innovation performance, an input indicator (level of R&D expenditure) is used in combination with an output indicator (increase in the innovation sales). Following Crepon et al. (1998) a simultaneous equations system is used with four equations (FP, collaboration, R&D and Innovation sales). The paper finds a positive impact for the FP on collaboration, and both factors positively affect the innovation performance (R&D and Innovation sales) of European firms. No crowding-out effect is found in the analysis. Show less
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PDF Design and European firms' innovative performance: A less costly innovation activity for European SMEs?
The objective of this study is to provide an analysis of the importance of design – defined as the procedures,… Show more choice of elements and technical preparation to implement a new product – and R&D investments as drivers of European firms' innovation performance. In doing so, it partly compensates for the lack of empirical evidence in the literature by using non-anonymised data from the third wave of the European CIS, and estimating a system of simultaneous equations to tackle the endogeneity inherent in these investment choices and the externalities associated with them. The robustness of results confirms the crucial role of design investment for innovation success in 23 European countries for both the manufacturing and service sectors and its role as a complement to technological R&D and as a driver for user-centred incremental (new-to-the-firm) and radical (new-to-the-market) innovations. In particular it found an increase of 1% expenditure increases innovation sales by between 0.34% and 0.49%, while the same increase in R&D investment increases innovation sales by between 0.64% and 0.86%. Interestingly, while investing in design shows no statistically different innovation output returns for small, medium-sized and large enterprises, this is not the case for R&D expenditures. The policy conclusions are clear: design is a less costly alternative to R&D for many SMEs and a policy of supporting design should be considered, as this might be a more cost-efficient support strategy. Show less
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PDF The 2011 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard
The 2011 "EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard" collects information on the top 1000 EU companies and 1000 non-EU companies investing… Show more the largest sums in R&D in the last reporting year. The Scoreboard includes data on R&D investment along with other economic and financial data from the last four financial years. Show less
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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
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PDF Doing R&D or not (in a crisis), that is the question...
This study investigates how corporate R&D evolves in the light of the contemporary economic crisis, using empirical evidence from past… Show more downturns, looking at the relevant literature and performing an empirical analysis of recent business survey data (collected during 2009). Findings show that some companies have reduced their innovation activities significantly, while others maintained them and a third group even increased their activities to reap the benefits in the expected upswing afterwards. Overall, we observe a deceleration of R&D and innovation activities in the light of the crisis, but the trend figures remain positive. Driven by the companies that reinforce their R&D and innovation efforts to thrive through the downturn and thus seek to gather the benefits in the upswing to come, the R&D and innovation landscape is likely to look different in the aftermath of the crisis. These changes will inevitably affect policy intervention in the field of innovation and are a unique chance for the reorientation of policy measures. More profoundly, they could be at the root of a new paradigm, departing from a transition from an industrial to a knowledge-based society. Show less