Publications
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PDF Is Export a Probe for Domestic Production?
Recent works leverage export data to assess country production structure and ultimately country relative competitiveness. These works mostly rely only… Show more on the exported part of the total country output for reasons of data availability, homogeneity, and quality. Here we use the World Input-Output Database (WIOD), which offers cross-country harmonized data that accounts both for domestic production and export, to investigate to what extent export is a proxy for domestic production. We find that export mirrors remarkably well domestic production for manufacturing sectors or sectors related to physical goods. Conversely, this relation fades away for service related sectors. We found those relations consistently across most of the 40 countries for which data are available. Show less
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PDF The new paradigm of economic complexity
Economic complexity offers a potentially powerful paradigm to understand key societal issues and challenges of our time. The underlying idea… Show more is that growth, development, technological change, income inequality, spatial disparities, and resilience are the visible outcomes of hidden systemic interactions. The study of economic complexity seeks to understand the structure of these interactions and how they shape various socioeconomic processes. This emerging field relies heavily on big data and machine learning techniques. This brief introduction to economic complexity has three aims. The first is to summarize key theoretical foundations and principles of economic complexity. The second is to briefly review the tools and metrics developed in the economic complexity literature that exploit information encoded in the structure of the economy to find new empirical patterns. The final aim is to highlight the insights from economic complexity to improve prediction and political decision-making. Institutions including the World Bank, the European Commission, the World Economic Forum, the OECD, and a range of national and regional organizations have begun to embrace the principles of economic complexity and its analytical framework. We discuss policy implications of this field, in particular the usefulness of building recommendation systems for major public investment decisions in a complex world. Show less
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The birth of new high growth enterprises: internationalisation through digitalisation
Internationalisation and the adoption of new digital technologies play an important role in the formation of new high growth enterprises.… Show more This paper examines this relationship for high growth enterprises in Europe and the UK, using data from the EIB Investment Survey and ORBIS. Its results highlight the complex influence of exporting and foreign direct investment on the capacity to become a high growth enterprise and the role of new digital technologies in this process. Show less
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1. The birth of new HGEs (2021): internationalization through new digital technologies
This paper explores the relationship between new digital technologies, internationalisation activity and its impact on High Growth Enterprises (HGEs), using… Show more the EIB Group Survey of Investment and Investment Finance and ORBIS data for 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom. After controlling for sample selection bias, our results suggest that being a HGE is positively associated with the probability that a firm conducts international activities, particularly FDI. Conversely, the internationalisation process seems to trigger strong subsequent firm-growth only for FDI, not for exports. Furthermore, we show evidence on the positive association between firms that are internationalised and those adopting new digital technologies. The adoption of new digital technologies is indirectly related to the status of being a HGE via internationalisation activity in the current period. Our results highlight the complex influence of exporting and FDI on the capacity to become a HGE and the role of new digital technologies in this process. Show less
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PDF Policy Brief: GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS AND INNOVATION NETWORKS IN THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL ERA
This policy brief provides insights into several issues from a policy perspective that are closely related to the implementation of… Show more I4.0 in the European context of digitalisation. The successful implementation of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) within the European Union (EU) should build upon existing global innovation networks (GINs) and global value chains (GVCs) and the ecosystem of EU firms, especially in the manufacturing industry where I4.0 could play an important role. Due to the large share of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that define the EUs competitiveness, it is vital to integrate I4.0 by ensuring these companies can benefit from their efforts in implementing it and create and offer value. It is important to address training, requalification and workers’ concerns about I4.0 in order to support its implementation while maintaining the EU social model. Harnessing the EU’s strength in industrial application, while bearing in mind its lag in traditional ICT industries, could make I4.0 a viable policy option ensuring future leadership of the European economy, if certain factors discussed in this policy brief are included in future industrial policies. Show less
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PDF Technological and innovation challenges for industry: Science for policy insights
This JRC Science for Policy report addresses the technological and innovation challenges that the EU industry has to face during… Show more the next decade. The report focuses on the following themes: Technology diffusion and industrial dynamics; Innovation and company value chains; Financing innovation; Industrial innovation for transitions and transformation; Employment and skills for industrial transformations; Integration of global to local industrial innovation perspectives; and new data, standards and methods. Show less
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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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Deriving new anticipation-based policy instruments for attracting research and development and innovation in global value chains to Europe
In this paper, we discuss new anticipation-based policy instruments to improve the attractiveness of Europe for innovative activities in a… Show more world of accelerating innovation. The case studies and interviews with company representatives which we collected in relation to developments in Global Value Chains Journal Pre-proof (GVC) show a high level of interest in these new anticipatory policy instruments. Since the companies analysed are active in different sectors and Research and Development and Innovation (R&D&I) Global Value Chains, we suggest that the policy instruments and options discussed be linked with current and future sectoral initiatives organised within the framework of the Smart Specialisation Strategy. This gives numerous established and new stakeholders from business, politics, science and society across Member States, regions and cities, and from outside the EU, the chance to develop bright ideas for new products, services, processes and employment, and to work in a well-structured and open-minded environment. In addition, this participatory, foresight-based approach helps regions to approach their development systematically in new fields of innovation and industry which are appropriate for the region's innovation ecosystem and for their stakeholders. This approach fits very well with the new innovation and foresight labs which are currently extremely popular in companies highly active in R&D&I. These labs have a highly experimental character and lots potential for gamechanging innovations. The same approach might be necessary for an ambitious policy to upgrade European industry and R&D&I capabilities in order to tap into transnational corporations' GVCs by creating a process for engaging, anticipating, assessing and responding on an ongoing basis. Show less
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The 2020 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 main global counterparts. The 2020 edition of the Scoreboard analyses the 2500 companies investing the largest sums in R&D in the world in 2019. A main difference in the presentation of data in this Scoreboard edition regards the new composition of the EU following the departure of the UK on 31 January 2020. Henceforth, in this report, the EU is understood as EU27 (i.e. without the UK). The 2020 Scoreboard total R&D is equivalent to approximately 90% of the world’s business-funded R&D. The sample includes 421 companies based in the EU, accounting for 20.9% of the total R&D in the sample, 775 US companies (38.5%), 309 Japanese companies (12.7%), 536 Chinese (13.1%) and 459 from the rest of the world (14.8%). This is the tenth consecutive year of R&D increases driven by R&D investments in ICT, Health and Automotive industries. Companies based in the EU increased significantly R&D (5.6%) but well below the US (10.8%) and Chinese companies (21%) rates. Show less