Publications
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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 Innovation and Job Creation. A sustainable relation?
This study compares the employment growth patterns of innovative and non-innovative firms focusing on whether there are systematic differences in… Show more the persistence of the jobs created. Using data from a unique longitudinal dataset of 3,300 Spanish firms over the years 2002-2009, obtained by matching different waves of the "Encuesta sobre Innovación en las Empresas españolas" and adopting a semiparametric quantile regression approach, we examine employment serial correlation. The empirical results of the study indicate that the jobs created by innovative firms generally appear to be rather persistent over time whereas those created by non-innovative firms do not. Among declining firms, non-innovators tend to deteriorate faster in terms of economic performance. In addition, among those firms experiencing high organic employment growth, smaller and younger innovative firms grow more on average than larger innovative firms. Overall, evidence suggests that being innovative supports and stabilises a firm's organic employment growth pattern and being smaller and younger seems to be a sufficient condition to experience high employment growth, i.e. - with regard to the latter - it is not necessary to have a comparably high R&D spending / being an R&D intensive company. Show less
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PDF The production function of top R&D investors: Accounting for size and sector heterogeneity with quantile estimations
This paper investigates how top R&D investors differ in the production impact of their inputs and in their rate of… Show more technical change. We use the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard and perform a quantile estimation of an augmented Cobb-Douglass production function for a panel of more than 1,000 companies, covering the period 2002-2010. The results for the pooled sample are contrasted with those obtained from the estimates for different groups of economic sectors. Returns to scale are bounded by the initial size of the firm, but to an extent that decreases with the technological intensity of the sector. The output return of knowledge capital is the most important, irrespective of firm size, but in high-tech sectors only. Elsewehere, physical capital is the pivotal factor, although with size variations. The investigated firms appear different also in their technical progress: embodied in mid-high and low/mid-low tech sectors, and disembodied in high-tech sectors. Show less
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PDF Knowledge Search versus Knowledge Deployment:How Foreignness can be both an Asset and a Liability for Firms
Many modern firms compete globally. However, research into whether foreignness is an asset or a liability in competition with domestic… Show more firms is inconclusive. We argue that foreign MNC subsidiaries are not per se advantaged or disadvantaged. We suggest that the distinction originates from the nature of the subsidiary's activity in the host country. We focus on two activities: knowledge search and knowledge deployment. We predict theoretically that domestic firms have advantages when they search for knowledge due to their embeddedness in the host country. However, this increased embeddedness reduces the degree of novelty of their knowledge pool. Foreign MNC subsidiaries therefore have advantages in knowledge deployment because they draw from a richer, international knowledge pool. However, these advantages accrue to both foreign and domestic MNCs. We test and support these predictions for a longitudinal dataset of 2900 firm observations in Spain. We develop recommendations for research and practice based on these findings. Show less
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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 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 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 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 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