Publications
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PDF Top R&D investors recovering fast from the Covid-19 crisis: Preliminary insight to the 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard
This policy brief presents preliminary insight in the 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard). It is based on… Show more a subsample of companies with available published accounts for the year 2021. The subsample consists of 678 companies representing 66.5% of the global R&D in the previous year’s Scoreboard. It includes 274 companies based in the EU, 198 in US, 112 Chinese companies, 16 Japanese companies and 78 from the rest of the world. Show less
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PDF The regional green potential of the European innovation system
The brief provides an overview of green technological development across European regions employing the Economic Fitness Complexity approach to establish… Show more a green technology space. The study explores the associations between comparative advantage in specific technological domains and a region’s capacity to develop green technologies, i.e. its Green Fitness. Furthermore, it addresses the interaction between the green and non-green knowledge bases, with a particular focus on whether regional know-how in the non-green technological realm can be exploited in the green domain and vice versa. To this aim, a metric of regional Green Potential is proposed. The analysis suggests that regions specialised in green domains, irrespective of their complexity, have a higher propensity to develop technologies connected with green technologies. Green technologies are linked mostly to technologies related to the production or transformation of materials; with engines and pumps; and with construction methods. The regions with the highest Green Potential are not necessarily those with the highest Green Fitness. The results suggest that there is a potential for green and non-green technological advances to generate positive spillovers in terms of capabilities to produce innovations across the spectrum of technological complexity. Show less
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High-Growth Enterprises in times of COVID-19: an overview
This paper contributes to a fast-growing literature on the impact of COVID-19 on the business economy, by focusing on how… Show more a particular group of firms - High-Growth Enterprises (HGEs) have been affected by COVID-19 across several dimensions, such as investment expectations, investment priorities, employment decisions, and their post-COVID-19 green and digital transitions. Using the EIB Investment Survey (EIBIS) and relying on descriptive statistics and basic regressions, the results suggest that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the investment expectations of HGEs, although they continue to invest slightly more than non-HGEs. Preliminary results suggest that HGEs appear to be more optimistic than non-HGEs in a variety of dimensions, such as optimism surrounding the use of digital technologies, and willingness to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation. However, our evidence shows that the HGEs in the 2020 survey wave have still been hit hard by the COVID-19 shock, compared to HGEs in previous years, which suggests that there may be a role for policy for supporting these valuable firms. Show less
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Economic crisis accelerates urban structural change via inter-sectoral labour mobility
Are recessions drivers of structural change? Here we investigate the resilience of cities, and argue that a re-allocation of labour… Show more between industrial sectors in times of crisis induces an acceleration in structural change. Using UK data, we find that cities experienced a sharp increase in inter-sectoral job transitions, and that local employment in skill-related sectors is most strongly associated with employment growth, during the recession, which we identify with the period of employment contraction between 2008 and 2011. This coincides with a massive but short-lived increase in the rate of structural change (i.e. the total change in employment shares of different industries) around 2009. These findings suggest that cities with skill-related sectors re-allocate workers in a crisis, thus inducing structural change. Show less
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Investment expectations by vulnerable European firms
The sudden onset of the COVID shock has left European economies reeling, resulting in a sudden contraction of demand that… Show more has hit some vulnerable firms and sectors in a remarkably uneven way. There is a genuine interest from policymakers to learn about which types of firms have been left in vulnerable circumstances as a result of the crisis. In this paper, we present new evidence on the evolution of investment plans of certain groups of firms suspected of being vulnerable -young and small firms, High-Growth Enterprises (HGEs) and R&D investors. We applied a difference-in-differences approach on panel data regarding forward-looking investment expectations. The results show that all the vulnerable groups are pessimistic about the availability of internal and external finance, with HGEs suddenly expecting less of a positive change in investment, and R&D investors expecting a negative change in investment. Show less
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Top R&D investors, structural change and the R&D growth performance of young and old firms
This paper investigates the structural change of the major economies through the lens of the leading global corporate R&D investors.… Show more Moreover, we explore the relationship between R&D intensity, capital intensity and profitability and R&D investment growth for young and old firms. Contrary to common understanding, our results show that in the EU the R&D distribution between sectors has changed – similar to the USA; however, the USA has experienced a very strong shift towards ICT-related sectors, which makes its change more visible. Both the EU and the USA have experienced a slower pace of structural change than emerging economies. The results also indicate that capital and R&D intensity may have a complementary effect on long-term R&D performance, which can vary according to a firm’s age. The specific nature of the sample allows to link our results to the Schumpeterian waves of innovation and the changes of techno-economic paradigms rather than alternative interpretation of management literature. Policy implications are discussed accordingly. Show less
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PDF Industrial innovation for competitive sustainability: Science-for-policy insights
New scientific evidence points out key issues helpful to designing policies and understanding new challenges. This brief article holds the… Show more outcomes of the CONCORDi 2021 conference focused on ‘Industrial innovation for competitive sustainability’, and organised by the European Commission’s JRC in collaboration with EARTO, OECD and UNIDO. The brief introduces the key takeaways from the scientific research presented and a summary of key policy insights arising from the mentioned event. Show less
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PDF The 2021 EU Survey on Industrial R&D Investment Trends
This publication is a Science for Policy report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge… Show more service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policymaking process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use that might be made of this publication. For information on the methodology and quality underlying the data used in this publication for which the source is neither Eurostat nor other Commission services, users should contact the referenced source. The designations employed and the presentation of material on the maps do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the European Union concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Show less
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Patenting in 4IR technologies and firm performance
We investigate whether firm performance is related to the accumulated stock of technological knowledge associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution… Show more (4IR) and, if so, whether the firm’s history in 4IR technology development affects such a relationship. We exploit a rich longitudinal matched patent-firm data set on the population of large firms that filed 4IR patents at the European Patent Office (EPO) between 2009 and 2014, while reconstructing their patent stocks from 1985 onward. To identify 4IR patents, we use a novel two-step procedure proposed by EPO (2020, Patents and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Global Technology Trends Enabling the Data-Driven Economy, European Patent Office), based on Cooperative Patent Classification codes and on a full-text patent search. Our results show a positive and significant relationship between firms’ stocks of 4IR patents and labor and total factor productivity. We also find that firms with a long history in 4IR patent filings benefit more from the development of 4IR technological capabilities than later applicants. Conversely, we find that firm profitability is not significantly related to the stock of 4IR patents, which suggests that the returns from 4IR technological developments may be slow to be cashed in. Finally, we find that the positive relationship with productivity is stronger for 4IR-related wireless technology and for artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, and big data analytics. Show less
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The 2021 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard
The main objective of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard) is to benchmark the performance of EU innovation-driven… Show more industries against major global counterparts and to provide an R&D investment database that companies, investors and policymakers can use to compare individual company performances against the best global competitors in their sectors. The 2021 edition of the Scoreboard analyses the 2500 companies that invested the largest sums in R&D worldwide in 2020. These companies, with headquarters in 39 countries, and more than 800k subsidiaries all over the world, each invested over €36 million in R&D in 2020. The total investment across all 2500 companies was €908.9bn, an amount equivalent to 90% of the world’s business-funded R&D. The top 2500 includes 401 companies based in the EU, accounting for 20% of the total, 779 US companies (38%), 597 Chinese companies (16%), 293 Japanese companies (12%) and 430 from the rest of the world (RoW, 14%). The RoW group comprises companies from South Korea (60), Switzerland (57), UK (105), Taiwan (86) and companies based in a further 15 countries. This report analyses companies' R&D, patents and other financial performance indicators over recent years, focusing on the comparative performance of EU companies and their global counterparts. Moreover, it includes a patent-based analysis showing the positioning of the EU in green technology for energy intensive industries; and a study exploring the role of the Scoreboard companies in achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). In 2020, the pandemic hit global business hard causing a significant drop in companies’ sales, profits and capital expenditures. However, overall R&D investment was sustained by increases in sectors positively affected by the crisis, namely ICT services and Health industries while most other sectors decreased R&D investment, particularly the transport-related industries that have been most strongly affected by the lockdown. The results of this report highlight the challenges and opportunities facing the EU as it seeks to improve its R&D capability and reinvigorate its industrial base, in line with the priorities of the new industrial and innovation EU policy, particularly in the context of the digital and green transitions. Show less