Publications
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PDF A Preliminary Index of SARS-CoV-2 Diagnostic Testing Patents
Diagnostic testing for COVID-19 is an important part of the management of the current pandemic. In this paper we reason… Show more that previous knowledge in diagnostic testing for Coronaviruses (such as MERS-Cov and SARS-Cov) might prove critical to the development and deployment for COVID-19 testing. By extracting keywords from this knowledge, we construct an indicator of inventive activity in the area of Coronavirus diagnostic tests and analyse this over time and measure where this knowledge is located in the world, with potentially important implications for the development and deployment of diagnostics for SARS-CoV-2. Show less
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PDF How the “EU Innovation Champions” successfully absorbed and reacted to the shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
• The COVID-19 pandemic presented great challenges, but also opportunities, to SMEs across Europe. • We examine how the “European Innovation… Show more Champions” successfully absorbed and reacted to the shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. • Five different paradoxical behaviors (i.e., planning, liquidity, time and velocity, partnership, resources and technology) characterized the European Innovation Champions during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. • We distill 10 management principles representing key actions and decisions that allowed the European Innovation Champions to manage each paradox. • This report provides policymakers and business leaders both within and outside the European Union with insights to enhance the capability of SMEs to succeed through a crisis. Show less
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PDF The role of gender in linking external sources of knowledge and R&D intensity
Scholars examining the effect of knowledge spillovers on R&D and innovation all agree on one thing--there is a strong relationship… Show more between the firm's R&D effort and knowledge spillover. The sign of this relationship depends, however, on many things, such as the type of spillovers (horizontal, vertical, or from other sources), the level of appropriability , the type of firm (e.g., age and sector), and the measurement of the spillover itself. A missing piece of evidence to this literature is the role of gender in the founding team of the firm. Our contribution is to fill this gap by explicitly analyzing the role played by gender in the founding team. Given that the relationship between a firm's R&D intensity and external knowledge spillovers is ultimately context-specific, we analyse the differences between male-owned and female-owned young entrepreneurial firms with respect to the influence that knowledge spillovers have on their R&D intensity. Show less
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PDF Regulations and technology gap in Europe: the role of firm dynamics
In this paper, we develop a new firm-level measure of distance to the productivity frontier that accounts for international technology… Show more spillovers stemming from the use of imported intermediate goods. The trade-weighted technological distance to frontier is matched with sector- and country-level data on regulation and firm dynamics (entry and exit rates) of 16 European countries. Using our measure of trade-adjusted technology gap, we investigate the role of labour, capital, and product market regulatory frameworks in the technology catch-up process, gauging the effect of firms' dynamics in mediating and moderating the impact of regulation on the technology gap. Our study offers a novel perspective and insights to the analysis of the link between framework conditions and technological distance to frontier. While most scholars argue that less regulation always favours productivity growth and the diffusion of technology, our results provide a more nuanced picture. Deregulation is not a one-size-fits-all solution that leads to faster technology diffusion, instead heterogeneity in business dynamism and countries' regulatory structures need to be considered. Show less
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PDF Organization and geography of global R&D and innovation activities: insights from qualitative research on leading corporate R&D investors
This study examines the on-going structural changes in the international organisation of corporate R&D and innovative (RDI) activities. Insights are… Show more mainly drawn from interviews made to innovation representatives and managers of large R&D-investing companies in 2017 in the frame of the European Commission’s project – Industrial Research and Innovation Monitoring and Analysis –. The research intends to complement the quantitative evidence available in the project on the worldwide leading corporate R&D investors in order to better characterize the on-going fragmentation of R&D and innovation activities. The study suggests directions for mapping innovation value chains beyond research and inventive activities and carries out important conceptual and policy implications for the configurations and sustainability of innovation systems in Europe. Show less
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PDF The EU vs US corporate R&D intensity gap: Investigating key sectors and firms
This paper contributes to the literature on corporate research and development (R&D) intensity decomposition by examining the effects of several… Show more parameters on R&D intensity. It draws on a longitudinal company-level micro-dataset, built using four editions of the EU R&D Scoreboard, and confirms the structural nature of the EU R&D intensity gap with the US, which has widened in the last decade. As a novel contribution to the literature, this paper uncovers the differences between the EU and the US by inspecting which sectors and firms are more accountable for the aggregate R&D intensity performance of these two economies. Furthermore, the study shows that a large share of R&D investment by the EU sample is mostly conducted in sectors with medium or low R&D intensity, and that there is a high concentration of R&D in a few sectors and firms. Interestingly, the investigation finds a high heterogeneity in firms' R&D intensity within sectors, indicating the coexistence of firms with different R&D investment strategies and efficiencies. Finally, the study reveals that the EU holds a much lower number of both larger and smaller R&D investors than the USA, in the four high-tech sectors that are key to the aggregate EU R&D intensity gap vis-à-vis the USA. Show less
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PDF On R&D sectoral intensities and convergence clubs
Sectoral convergence in R&D intensities among firms is a concept that, although rarely formalized, has been at the center of… Show more discussions of industrial and non-industrial actors, such as entrepreneurs, institutions and academics. Far from being a settled issue, the subject has seen very limited empirical attention. We start from the few current evidences, which point to the existence of some beta-convergence together with diffused heterogeneity. We recover and integrate the literature from convergence clubs and extend the work introducing the use of Pavitt taxonomy, and new estimation techniques. Particularly, we apply the concept of weak sigma-convergence using a quite novel econometric factor model. Thanks to this, we provide evidences of both beta-convergence for within-sector intensities and of club convergence for across-sector intensities. Finally, the club classification according to "innovative effort" may be used as an alternative way to look at standard economic activities classifications. Show less
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PDF Robotization in Central and Eastern Europe: catching up or dependence
While in the most developed European countries the combination of fallingrobotpricesandhighwagesboostsrobotization,thesedriving factors do not sufficiently explain why we are experiencing… Show more today a sharp increase in deployment of industrial robots in European countries with low wages. Particularly, in Central and Eastern Europe where a decade ago industrial robots were almost nonexistent but today more than 30,000 robots are at work. Hence this paper, by recalculating the data of International Federation of Robotics and EU-KLEMS addresses the main question: What drives and hinders the robotization in Central and Eastern Europe? Show less
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PDF Financial constraints and intangible investments. Do innovative and non-innovative firms differ?
We investigate the extent to which financial constraints hamper the firms’ investment in intangibles. Drawing on the extant literature, we… Show more maintain that a distinction should be kept between innovators and non-innovators. Moreover, we argue that such a distinction should be investigated along the whole spectrum of intangibles firms invest and by addressing the risks of reverse causality and simultaneity bias in the relationship. Through an original quasi-panel extension of a recent European Innobarometer survey, we estimate two sets of recursive bivariate probit models – for innovative and non-innovative firms’ investments – from which interesting results emerge. Financial barriers hamper the investment of both kinds of firms only for R&D, design, and organisation and business processes. With respect to other intangibles, instead, financial barriers act only on innovators (or non-innovators) or are even absent. Furthermore, the hampering role of financial barriers distributes differently across different intangibles between innovators and non-innovators. Show less
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PDF Labor mobility from R&D-intensive multinational companies: Implications for knowledge and technology
Private sector R&D is largely concentrated in a few multinational companies (MNCs), which thus play an important role in the… Show more creation of knowledge and technology in the economy. The mobility of labor between these firms and the rest of the economy is therefore an important mechanism for the diffusion of knowledge. This paper analyses in great detail the flow of labor between firms with specific emphasis on flows to and from R&D intensive MNCs. Using linked employer-employee data for Denmark, we match employees moving from R&D intensive MNCs to other employees switching jobs. We find that employees are more inclined to move between R&D intensive MNCs and their subsidiaries rather than between these firms and other firms in the economy. This is particularly true for high skill employees. Our results suggest that other domestic firms are to a larger extent kept out of the ‘knowledge spillover’ loop, which provide them with fewer opportunities to learn from the R&D intensive MNCs. In other words, R&D intensive MNCs and their subsidiaries form a kind of sub labor market within the national labor market; employees exhibit higher mobility within this group of firms than between this group and the rest of the labor market. Show less