A Microeconometric note on product innovation and product innovation advertising

This paper seeks to explain why more than half of the German service sector firms that introduce a product innovations do not advertise their new or markedly improved product. One part of the explanation is that they do not need to advertise because they are closely related to their customers anyway, and another part of the explanation is that product innovation and product innovation advertising are strategic substitutes.     

Workplace organization and innovation

Abstract This study uses panel data on Canadian establishments to explore the relationship between the organization of work – in particular decentralization, information‐sharing, and incentive pay schemes – and innovation. Like other studies, ours finds a clear positive link between these factors. However, the data give strong indications that this relationship is not causal. We show that: (1) the correlation between workplace organization and innovation holds for information‐sharing but is much weaker for decentralized decision‐making or incentive pay programs, (2) controls for unobserved heterogeneity significantly weaken results, and (3) lagged variables give no clear evidence that organizational changes predate innovation.     

Persistence of product innovation: comparing breakthrough and incremental product innovation

In this paper we examine whether and to what extent breakthrough and incremental product innovation is persistent at the firm level. Drawing on a panel database created from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) we find that lagged breakthrough product innovation ‘new to the market’, has a significant and positive influence on firms’ ability to develop current breakthrough innovation, while this is not the case for incremental-product innovation ‘only new to the firm’. Our findings show that the dynamics of innovation persistence differ across types of (product) innovations.     

Offshoring and product innovation

We propose an endogenous growth model with offshoring to investigate its effects on product innovation and growth in the country of origin. Offshoring is associated with reduced feedback from offshored plants to domestic labs as well as coordination problems between the offshored and domestic divisions of firms. Production and transport cost parameters affect the static decision to relocate plants but not R&D. Hence, offshoring may be chosen by firms when it damages the growth rate of their countries of origin. In particular, if offshoring reduces the feedback from plants to labs, it is likely to bring dynamic losses when the countries of origin are large, especially in sectors in which R&D is cheap and product differentiation is strong. It is also likely to slow growth in sectors in which contractual incompleteness gives a strong bargaining power to offshored divisions in intra-firm transactions. We thank Thierry Verdier, an anonymous referee and participants to the Final Conference of the EU funded Research Training Network “Trade, Industrialisation and Development”, held at Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques on 26–27 October 2006, for helpful comments. The second author gratefully acknowledges financial support from MIUR.     

Impact of organizational innovation on product and process innovation

The purpose of this paper was to test the effect of organizational innovation on product and process innovation (while controlling for endogeneity). Our hypothesis was that organizational innovation should have a significant and positive impact on technical (product or process) innovation. We control for endogeneity by using a Poisson estimator that accommodates a binary endogenous regressor. We test 10 potential instruments using a battery of test criteria and settle on five. All results are presented using the five instruments to avoid expectation bias. In general we find that organizational innovation does impact technical innovation positively. With the 2009 data we find that the mean of the average treatment effect for product innovation is roughly 1.7 times that of process innovation. For the 2009–2012 data we find that the impact on product innovation is roughly 1.5 times that of process innovation. For the 2012 data, we had anomalous results for process innovation, such that organizational innovation reduced the number of process innovations by 2.3 per year. In terms of Canadian government policy, the results lend support to the view that technical innovation is not the only innovation that matters. The right policy mix may encourage firms to experiment with and adopt more organizational innovations to enhance technical innovation.     

Quality differentiation and product innovation licensing

Evidence reveals that there are more than 50% product innovation licensings applied within industries. We study product innovation licensing (quality-enhancing licensing) in both exclusive and non-exclusive schemes each under unit/revenue royalty and fixed fee in a vertically differentiated Cournot oligopoly, where a quality-leading firm is an internal licensor. We show that, under a non-exclusive licensing, royalty licensing is the superior policy for the licensor if quality difference within firms is small, regardless of whether a unit or revenue royalty scheme is offered. Under an exclusive licensing, a two-part tariff is optimal. If fixed fee licensing is practicable, the licensor favors an exclusive licensing. Furthermore, an increase in quality difference within firms increases the optimal rates. Using the simulated results, we examine that licensing improves social welfare in all schemes, and the number of licensees will influence the magnitude of welfare enhancement.     

Competing eco-labels and product market competition

I examine the impact of competition between eco-labeling programs in a market where eco-labels that communicate information about product's environmental quality (a credence attribute) are also strategic variables for competing firms. Specifically, I consider a dynamic setting where an industry-sponsored eco-labeling program and a program sponsored by environmental NGOs compete strategically in setting the labeling standards, before price-setting firms make strategic choices of which eco-label (if any) to adopt; adopting firms not presently meeting the labeling standards undertake costly quality improvement to comply with them. I find that the competition between eco-labeling programs may lead to the same high environmental benefit as when there exists only the NGO program. I also find that the competition may yield higher social welfare.     

Labour market implications of EU product market integration

European labour markets are in a state of flux due to the changing market situation induced by international integration. This process affects wage formation through more fierce product market competition and increased mobility of jobs. This development is by some observers taken to enforce labour market flexibility, while for others it signals an erosion of social standards and in turn possibly the welfare society. Since labour is not very mobile in Europe, the effects of international integration on labour markets are mostly indirect via product market integration. We review the channels through which product market integration affects labour markets and perform an empirical analysis of the convergence and interdependencies in wage formation among EU countries. We find that integration is changing labour market structures and inducing wage convergences as well as stronger wage interdependencies, but it is a gradual process. Moreover, the present study does not support the view that international integration will lead to a 'race to the bottom' and rapidly erode domestic labour markets standards, nor that it will relieve politicians of the need to consider labour market reforms to improve labour market performance.     

Mergers and the market for organization capital

In this paper, mergers are an equilibrium outcome in which acquirers “marry” targets so as to gain access to their organization capital. Firms with lower learning costs about the new technology are not necessarily those that manage it best once it is mature. Since there are gains from trade, a market for organization capital can arise through mergers. This model generates a merger wave after a shock to technology and is consistent with several other stylized facts on mergers documented in the literature.     

Labour market deregulation, 'flexibility' and innovation

Labour ‘flexibility’ is often portrayed as importantto competitive success. Using evidence from an original surveyof UK firms, this paper investigates the relationships betweenfirms' use of, on the one hand, various flexible work practices,human resource management techniques, and industrial relationssystems and, on the other hand, the innovative activities ofthose firms. Our results suggest that the sort of ‘lowroad’ labour flexibility practices encouraged by labourmarket deregulation—short-term and temporary contracts,a lack of employer commitment to job security, low levels oftraining, and so on—are negatively correlated with innovation.     

The product innovation process and GDP dynamics

In this paper, we explain GDP dynamics through an analysis of the forces that modify the structure of the economy. These forces are represented by the entry of new firms and product innovations. Our model is inspired by Bak’s sand pile model, and the entry of a new firm or innovation is comparable to dropping a grain of sand in Bak’s model. The resulting model involves the insights of both Keynes and Schumpeter. It could be defined as Keynesian because the aggregate output is demand driven. That said, the model can mainly be labeled as Schumpeterian for several reasons: (i) innovations have a key role, (ii) credit is involved in supporting the innovation process, (iii) innovations partially destroy old industries, and finally (iv) without innovations, the system gradually approaches its stationary state. In this simple model, the change in the number of sectors (products) of the economy is the decisive factor with the following results: (1) the aggregate production has an increasing trend; (2) fluctuations are asymmetric; (3) recessions have a “creative destruction” explanation; (4) “classical” cycles are gradually replaced by “growth” cycles.     

Selling licences for a process innovation: the impact of the product market on the selling mechanism

Abstract.  This article considers the sale by a research lab of licences for a cost-reducing innovation. The marginal cost of a firm that wins a licence is private information and the acquisition of a licence imposes a negative externality on the other firms. The lab's optimal revenue is determined from a class of mechanisms in which the lab selects the number of licences and the reserve price before the sale. The role of the downstream product market in the determination of the number of licences is analyzed. Furthermore, it is also shown that the optimal reserve price may be zero.     

Corporate governance structure and product market competition

This article assesses the effects of the competitive structure of a product market on a firm’s corporate governance structure. Our model demonstrates that shareholders strategically determine the corporate governance structure, including the manager’s stock ownership and his controlling power over the firm, in order to maximize their utility in the product market competition. We find that the manager’s stock ownership is lower and his controlling power over the firm is higher when the firm’s product is more profitable or when competition within the product market is more severe. The inefficiency of the wealth transfer from shareholders to the manager also affects the corporate governance structure.     

Horizontal innovation-based growth and product market competition

The influence of the intensity of competition in the product market on economic growth is analyzed by developing an endogenous growth model with horizontal innovation. Product market competition is measured by (1 − Lerner index) and depends on both the share of factor inputs in total income and the degree of substitutability across goods. We find that the shape of the relationship between competition and growth can change dramatically according to which proxy of competition is used. We explain our results in terms of the interplay between the resource allocation and the profit incentive effects.     

Cooperation versus competition in product innovation

This paper analyzes the optimal antitrust policy in the context of a patent race. In a simplified model, we identify the conditions under which allowing cooperation yields greater welfare than imposing competition. In view of our results, we discuss, critically, the current European policy towards R&D cooperation.     

我国公司的组织治理与市场治理

21世纪我国GDP的主要生产者,大体上可认为是国有控股公司和市场型运营公司两大主体.从我国的实际来看,如果将这两大主体的公司治理结构分别理解或界定为组织治理型和市场治理型,则可认知我国公司治理中委托代理关系的许多不同于西方国家的规定性.这些规定性既可以从公司治理结构的内部制衡来理解,也可以围绕市场的外部约束来认识.我国公司的组织治理和市场治理受制于特定的制度环境,联系制度环境来研究这两种治理模式,或许对完善公司治理结构有所帮助.