International Knowledge Flows: Evidence From Patent Citations

This paper explores the patterns of citations among patents taken out by inventors in the U.S., the U.K., Francc. Germany and Japan. We find (I) patents assigned to the same firm are more likely to cite each other, and come sooncr than other citations; (2) patents in the same patent class are approxinlatcly 100 titlles as likely to cite each other as ydtents froin different patent classes, but there is not a strong time pattern to this effect; (3) patents whose inventors reside in the same country are typically 30 to 80% more likely to cite each other than inventors from othcr countrics, and these citations come sooner; and (4) there are clear country-specific citation tendencies, e.g., Japanese citations typically come sooner than those of othcr countries.     

High Technology Employment,Wages And University R&D Spillovers: Evidence From Us Cities

Using 4 years of data from 36 American cities and 6 high technology groupings we present thc first estimates of University R&D spillover effects on ctnployrnent at this level of disag-gregation, while controlling for wages, prior innovations, state fixed efrccts, and saniple selectivity hias. We find robust evidence that lagged and disaggrcgated university R&D is a significant determinant of city high technology employment and some evidence for employment effects of innovation.     

Establishment Level Earnings,Technology And The Growth Of Inequality: Evidence From Britain

It is often argued that technical change is responsible for the increase in wage inequality in Britain and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. In this paper we examine this argument using data from individuals and establishments. It is found that the presence of micro-electronic technologies in workplaces is associated with higher earnings, especially for skilled workers. Decompositions suggest that technical change could have been a cause of the increase in skills premium for highly skilled workers. Nevertheless, our view is that the correlation between wages and plant-level technology is mainly driven by the effect of high wages on the propensity to introduce new technologies rather than vice versa. This view is supported by simultaneous models of the wage-technology relationship.     

Technological Competence And Firm Economic Performance In Zimbabwe's Manufacturing Industry

Using data obtained from firm interviews, the paper attempts to relate, statistically, economic performance with technology. The firms interviewed belong to four industries: food and beverages (ISIC 31), textiles and clothing (ISIC 32), wood and furniture (ISIC 33), and metalworking (ISIC 34). An aggregate, synthetic, technology variable was built using data on three components: transfer of technology channels, manpower technical skills, and technological efforts. The transfer channels component comprised three sub-components: number of licensing contracts, number of technical assistance agreements, and number of expatriate technical personnel. The skills component also included three sub-components: number of engineers, number of scientists, and number of middle level technical personnel employed. The technical efforts component was formed by the addition of two normalized sub-components: R&D expenditures and number of uses made of technical support services. All these variables were measured at the individual firm level. The paper explores first the relationship between technology (as defined above) and two potential explanatory variables: size of firm and foreign ownership. In a second statistical exercise, the technology variable is incorporated, with traditional factors of production, in a production function. In the last statistical exercise, firm performance indicators were related to technology. Based on the availability of reliable data, the two performance indicators selected were: output per worker and whether the firm exported part of its output or not. The possible incidence of sectoral (industry) effects was also taken into account. It could be concluded that the sample data used shows a statistically significant, though not very strong, effect of the technology variable on both, output and output per worker, and a somewhat stronger association with whether Zimbabwe's manufacturing firms export or not.     

Political Connectedness and Firm Performance: Evidence from Germany

Abstract. This paper investigates politically connected firms in Germany. With the introduction of a new transparency law in 2007, information on additional income sources for all members of the German parliament became publicly available. We find that members of the conservative party (CDU/CSU) and the liberal party (FDP) are more likely to work for firms than members of left‐wing parties (SPD and The Left) or the green party (Alliance 90/The Greens). Politically connected firms are larger, less risky and have lower market valuations than unconnected firms. They also have fewer growth opportunities, but slightly better accounting performance. On the stock market, connected firms significantly outperformed unconnected firms in 2006, i.e. before the publication of the data on political connections. Differences in stock market performance were much smaller in 2007.     

Adoption Of Advanced Manufacturing Technology And Firm Performance In The Netherlands

This paper presents characteristics of firms that employ advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), explores the pattern of adoption of such technology, and traces the effects of adoption on the evolution of employment and productivity. The study uses linked firm-level data on production, factor inputs and on advanced manufacturing technology. It is found that the percentage of firms that employ advanced technology increases with higher labor productivity, higher export-sales ratios, and especially larger firm sire. Corrected for interactions, however, only initial size and the initial capital-labor ratio aid in predicting adoption of AMT. Conditional on adoption of AMT it is seen that intensity of advanced technology inputs decrease with firm sire and with labar productivity. Finally, firms which employed AMT in 1992 show higher average growth rates of (toral factor) productivity and employment between 1985 and 1991.     

Productivity Growth And Market Structure In Telecommunications

This study examines sources of telecommunications sector productivity growth. Total factor productivity (TFP) growth is calculated using the Malmquist productivity index for a sample of 74 countries for the period 1991 through 1995. An econometric model is estimated which relates TFP growth to output growth, network digitisation, telecommunications development, output-mix, the business cycle and market structure. Model estimates suggest that higher digitisation rates dampen TFP growth in the short run, and cross-subsidisation of services creates inefficiency. However, developing countries can increase TFP growth through catch up, and increased privatisation and competition are conducive to productivity growth.     

The Impact Of Technological Change On Employment: Evidence From A Firm-Level Survey Of Long Island Manufacturers

Recent studies of capital-skill complementarity suffer from several important empirical limitations and a theoretical framework that treats technological change as exogenous. This paper addresses some of these limitations using a new, detailed firm-level dataset on technology usage and labor composition. Based on two-stage estimation procedures, our results imply that technological change leads to a shift in labor composition and compensation in favor of white-collar workers.     

New Technology-Based Firms In Sweden - A Study Of Their Direct Impact On Industrial Renewal

The purpose of this paper is to analyse some of the ways in which new tcchnology-bascd firms (NTBFs), started after 1975, have contributed to the process of industrial renewal in Sweden. For this purpose, we have developed a novel way of operationalizing the concept of NTBFs and of identifying the population of such companies in Sweden. The method relies heavily on unique data on the educational background of the firm's staff. We found that NTBFs constitute a relatively small but growing phenomenon in Sweden. Although small in magnitude, the firms have contributed to industrial renewal by increasing the knowledge-intensity and science base of Swedish industry and industry-related services. They have also contributed somewhat to the redirection of the knowledge base in Sweden in favour of skills which are central to the innovation process in growth sectors, primarily computer science skills.     

The Installed Base Effect: Some Empirical Evidence From The Microcomputer Market

The penetration rate US network technologies is not only determined by the indigenous qualities of these technologies, but also by the adoption behaviour of other actors using the same network technology. This paper provides empirical evidence for the importance of network externalities and suggests that the econonmic consequences of network externalities - as they affect the diffusion speed of network technologies at an aggregate level - may be considerable.When the market offers incompatible network technologies, the relative share of previous adopters of the technologies plays a critical role in determining the diffusion speed of network technologies. This paper provides empirical evidence from the European microcomputer market between 1985 and 1994 which supports this hypothesis. Our analysis suggests that the diffusion speed of microcomputers at an aggregate level has varied with the relative order of magnitude of the network size of the two incompatible operating systems: a higher variation between the number of users of different microcomputers sold is positively relaled to a higher diffusion speed of microcomputers in general.     

Innovation Dynamics And Endogenous Adjustment In The Telecommunications Industry

Patterned innovation dynamics - investment-mix shifts and inter-organizational alliances -are examined for their roles in facilitating accelelating technical advance in the telecom industry since the mid-1970s. While internal investment shifts favoring R&D and declining rates of capital recovery were ubiquitous across the period, this was especially so for telecom equipment suppliers. Comparative analyses suggest that such innovation investment strategies have been of less benefit to telecom firms than to producers in nearly any other major manufacturing sector. Trends in organizational innovation in the form of alliance fonnation are also reported. The challenges these innovation dynamics pose for neoclassical models are discussed.     

Research,Innovation And Productivi[Ty: An Econometric Analysis At The Firm Level

This paper studies the links between productivity, innovation and research at the firm level. We introduce three new features: (i) A structural model that explains productivity by innovation output, and innovation output by research investment: (ii) New data on French manufacturing firms, including the number of European patents and the percentage share of innovative sales, as well as firm-level demand pull and technology push indicators; (iii) Econometric methods which correct for selectivity and simultaneity biases and take into account the statistical features of the available data: only a small proportion of firms engage in research activities and/or apply for patents; productivity, innovation and research are endogenously determined; research investment and capital are truncated variables, patents are count data and innovative sales are interval data.

We find that using the more widespread methods, and the more usual data and model specification, may lead to sensibly different estimates. We find in particular that simultaneity tends to interact with selectivity, and that both sources of biases must be taken into account together. However our main results are consistent with many of the stylized facts of the empirical literature. The probability of engaging in research (R&D) for a firm increases with its size (number of employees), its market share and diversification, and with the demand pull and technology push indicators. The research effort (R&D capital intensity) of a firm engaged in research increases with the same variables, except for size (its research capital being strictly proportional to size). The firm innovation output, as measured by patent numbers or innovative sales, rises with its research effort and with the demand pull and technology indicators, either directly or indirectly through their effects on research. Finally, firm productivity correlates positively with a higher innovation output, even when controlling for the skill composition of labor as well as for physical capital intensity.     

Employment And Mobility Of Workers In Industries With Different Intensity Of Innovation: Evidence On Italy From A Panel Of Workers And Firms

In this paper a panel of workers and firms is used to investigate employment composition and dynamics in industries which differ by innovation intensity. To define the latter industry-wide statistics were used (for a subset of 2,800 firms, individual data on R&D expenditures and investments in innovative processes were available from a survey on manufacturing). Firms and workers are observed over the period 1985–1991. The paper document an high rate of labour turnover. Annual separation rates are high in all size-classes, but they decline from 50% in small firms (less than 20 employees) to 13% in large ones (with more than 1,000 employees). Separations are inversely related to an industry's innovative intensity (from 18% in the highly innovative industries to 31% in the traditional industries). A logit model, which controlled for the characteristics of workers and firms, showed that the probability of separation is higher among manual and young workers and decreases monotonically with the firm size. The probability of separation declines as job tenure and, perhaps more importantly, the individual's wage increases. After controlling for these factors, the evidence suggests that the highest probability of separation is in traditional industries, the lowest is in the more innovative industries. The result is strengthened when firm-level data on R&D and other innovative expenditures are used. Other things being equal, firms that invest in R&D have a more stable labour force, and firms that invest in non-innovative processes have a less stable labour force. We therefore find empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that more innovative firms cultivate more durable employer-employee relationships. The fraction of job-to-job moves (with no intervening period of unemployment) on total separations qualifies the turnover of workers. Controlling for firm size, the percentage of job-to-job moves increases fairly regularly with worker's skills and with the industry's innovative intensity. Thus the innovative intensity of he industry appears to have a positive effect on the share of job-to-job moves, while there is some evidence that it lowers the chances of separation. This result may be linked to the skills and specialisations of the workforce; it is certainly related to the higher demand for labour in the High Tech Sectors (where employment is growing) relative to the less innovative sectors.