Publications
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PDF Background Note CONCORDi 2021
This background note describes five core global disruptions affecting the world economy in the context of industrial innovation for competitive… Show more sustainability. It discusses how scientific evidence presented at the 8 th CONCORDi conference proposes to tackle some of these disruptions, and concludes by highlighting the policy-relevant issues. This resonates with CONCORDi’s science-to-policy objective - from the four conference organisers JRC, EARTO, OECD and UNIDO. The note is addressed to the participants of CONCORDi 2021 as well as to a wider audience interested in the main themes of this conference. Show less
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PDF World corporate top R&D investors: Paving the way for climate neutrality
The current fourth edition of this biennial report on the innovative activity of the world’s top corporate R&D investors is… Show more the result of a long-standing and fruitful collaboration between the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It focuses on the role that these companies can play in reaching climate neutrality by developing, owning and commercialising low-carbon technologies. It does so by presenting and analysing data on their patent and trademark portfolios, with particular emphasis on intellectual property rights related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Show less
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Capacity constraints as a trigger for high growth
High-growth enterprises (HGEs) have a large economic impact but are notoriously hard to predict. Previous research has linked high-growth episodes… Show more to the configuration of lumpy indivisible resources inside firms, such that high capacity utilisation levels might stimulate future growth. We theorize that firms reaching critically high capacity utilisation levels reach a “trigger point” involving either broad-based investment in further growth or shrinking back to previous levels. We analyze EIBIS survey data (matched to ORBIS) which features a question on time-varying capacity utilisation. Overcapacity is a transitory state. Firms enter into overcapacity after a period of the rapid growth of sales and profits, and the years surrounding overcapacity have higher employment growth rates. Firms operating at overcapacity make incremental investments (e.g. capacity expansion, process improvements and modern machinery) rather than investing in R&D and new product development. We find support for the “fork in the road” hypothesis: for some firms, overcapacity is associated with launching into massive investments and subsequent sales growth, while for other firms, overcapacity is negatively related to both investments and sales growth. Show less
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PDF HOW INNOVATIVE EU FIRMS FACED THE COVID-19 DOWNTURN
-The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered many challenges, but also opportunities, for businesses across Europe. -We examine how the innovation and growth… Show more of firms in the EU have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and how as “European Innovation Champions”, SMEs reacted to the resultant shock. -We find that compared to non-innovative firms, the economic performance of innovative firms in the EU has been considerably less affected by the pandemic. 1. Pandemic effects for business innovators… an exceptional context with little evidence in the literature -We also identify five different paradoxical behaviours of ‘European Innovation Champions” during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. -Industrial policies targeting SMEs should be flexible and allow companies to adapt their investment plans in line with the evolving conditions to preserve and succeed through the crisis. -EU instruments, such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility and Horizon Europe, offer wide opportunities for firms to exit from the Covid-19 crisis and boost their future competitiveness. Show less
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PDF Techno-Economic study on the potential of European Industrial Companies regarding Europe's Green Deal
The study provides theoretical as well as case-study based evidence for the potential of European industries to become carbon neutral… Show more and provide job security and growth in the EU. The study identifies, maps, and analyses Global Innovation Networks, i.e. networks between industry and other actors that facilitate innovation, and their role in making the European Green Deal a success. The study also presents the main current policy context in place in the EU, China and the U.S., e.g. regulatory and financial frameworks, and identifies the main drivers and barriers for investing in technologies relevant for Europe's Green Deal. In addition, a concise policy toolbox for Research & Development & Innovation (R&D&I) policies supporting technologies relevant for Europe's Green Deal is discussed. It moves beyond the current European, national, regional and sectoral policy instruments and mixes of policies based on the insights obtained throughout the whole study. The findings offer an important knowledge base for devising new and additional policy instruments. Show less
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Do capacity constraints trigger high growth for enterprises?
High-Growth Enterprises (HGEs) have a large economic impact, but are notoriously hard to predict. Previous research has linked high-growth episodes… Show more to the configuration of lumpy indivisible resources inside firms, such that high capacity utilisation levels might stimulate future growth. We theorize that firms reaching critically high capacity utilisation levels reach a ‘trigger point’ involving either broad-based investment in further growth, or shrinking back to previous levels. We analyse EIBIS survey data (matched to ORBIS) which features a question on time-varying capacity utilisation. Overcapacity is a transitory state. Firms enter into overcapacity after a period of rapid growth of sales and profits, and the years surrounding overcapacity have higher employment growth rates. Firms operating at overcapacity make incremental investments (e.g. capacity expansion, process improvements, and modern machinery) rather than investing in R&D and new product development. We find support for the ‘fork in the road’ hypothesis: for some firms, overcapacity is associated with launching into massive investments and subsequent sales growth, while for other firms, overcapacity is negatively related to both investments and sales growth. Show less
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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