Which skills contribute most to absorptive capacity,innovation and productivity performance? Evidence from the US and Western Europe

ABSTRACT

Skills are widely recognised as central to absorptive capacity, that is, firms’ ability to identify and make effective use of knowledge, ideas and technologies that are generated elsewhere. But identification of the specific levels of education and skills that contribute most to the development of absorptive capacity is often hampered by the use of skill measures as proxies for absorptive capacity itself. Drawing on a cross-country industry-level dataset, we retain separate measures of key components of absorptive capacity, namely, skills, R&D investments and openness to foreign trade and investment. We then estimate a system of structural equations in order to evaluate the extent to which different levels of skill contribute to innovative output (measured by growth in patenting) and subsequently to growth in productivity. We find important roles for both high-level skills and upper intermediate (technician-level) skills in converting the knowledge sourcing opportunities provided by openness into innovative output. In final stages of production (making use of innovative output), productivity growth in countries near to the technological frontier is enhanced not just by high-level and upper intermediate skills but also by the skills of the workforce as a whole.     

R&D investments and corporate cash holdings

This paper presents evidence about how research and development (R&D) expenditures affect corporate cash holdings in European country groups that differ in their innovation capacity. In theory, one can expect intangible investments such as R&D to result in higher cash stocks than fixed investments, particularly because intangible capital is less suitable as collateral for obtaining external funds. The relationship can be expected to be particularly strong in innovative countries. These countries carry out a relatively high proportion of cutting-edge R&D, which tends to be particularly risky and may be associated with substantial gestation lags before becoming productive. These features tend to increase firms' precautionary cash holdings. To investigate this issue in a European context, we examine different groups of countries that are clustered based on differences in their innovative capacity. Our estimation results confirm a positive relation between changes in R&D investment and changes in cash holdings, whereas changes in fixed investment do not appear to be related to changes in cash positions. The impact of changes in R&D on cash tends to be higher for country groups characterized by a high level of innovative capacity than for countries with moderate levels of innovative capacity. However, the differences across country groups are less pronounced than expected.     

An empirical analysis of firm process and product patenting

This paper presents an empriical study of the determinants of firm patenting. Since industrial research and development (R&D) encompasses a variety of activities, this study distinguishes between patents on process innovations and patents on product innovations. The property rights provided by a patent may differ between process and product patents, which suggests that the determinants of process innovations and product innovations may difer as well.

Several recent studies have distinguished between research directed toward process innovations and research directed toward product innovations. Scherer (1983a) included measures of process R&D spending and product R&D spending in regressions for inter-industry differences in productivity growth. Link and Lunn (1984) found that the returns to process-related R&D activity exceed the returns to product-related R&D activity. Link (1982) found inter-firm differences in the allocation of R&D spending for process innovations and product innovations. Lunn (1986) found differences in the determinants, as well as the effects, of process patenting and product patenting at the industry level. This paper examines whether the determinants of product and process patenting differ at the firm level.     

International Transmission of Technology and Trade: The Role of Cross-country Heterogeneity

In the framework where the channel of international transmission of technology is trade in intermediate inputs, this paper investigates the role of heterogeneities across countries. In particular, this paper analyzes how cross-country differences in production structure, national innovative capacity, and absorptive capacity affect the scope and magnitude of international R&D spillovers on productivity. The study is based on the industry-level data set that covers eight OECD countries from 1970 to 1995. It finds that accounting for cross-country differences in each of production structure (using country-specific input–output relations) and national innovative capacity (using patents granted per R&D investment) yields significantly different spillover effects than previous studies. This suggests that the effect of international R&D spillovers depends on both production structure and the pattern of international trade. Further, it finds the absorptive capacity of a country is positively related to spillovers.     

Knowledge spillovers,absorptive capacity and total factor productivity in China’s manufacturing firms

Applying the stochastic frontier framework, this study explores the diffusion and absorption of technological knowledge in China’s manufacturing firms, based on a panel of more than 10,000 local and foreign-invested firms over the period 1998–2001. Our empirical approach allows us to distinguish between technological progress (TP) and technical efficiency (TE) in analysing whether R&D, exports and the presence of foreign direct investment simultaneously enhance TP through knowledge spillovers in a single framework and whether different types of domestic absorptive capacity moderate external knowledge spillovers in relation to TE. The results show that there are positive inter-industry productivity spillovers from R&D and foreign presence, whereas evidence of intra-industry productivity spillovers from FDI to Chinese firms is less robust. We find evidence that absorptive capacity is one of the key determinants to quantitatively explain intra-industry differences in productivity of local Chinese firms. The findings have important policy implications.     

University patents,R&D competition,and social welfare

Although university patenting has increased dramatically over the past three decades, debates persist regarding the broad economic implications of the phenomenon. This article examines the social welfare implications of university patenting in a model of R&D competition in which firms develop innovations on the basis of the disclosure of a university invention. When such disclosure does not preempt the patenting of downstream innovations, university patenting enhances social welfare only if a regime of open access to university inventions is characterized by excessive aggregate R&D from the viewpoint of social welfare. When the university invention disclosure preempts patenting on firms’ innovations, the nature of the open access equilibrium in the R&D market depends on the threat of imitation ex post. Only when the threat of imitation is sufficiently strong firms will not invest in downstream R&D in the open access regime. In this case, university patenting promotes R&D investment and increases social welfare.     

Patents vs publications and R&D: three sides of the same coin? Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) for OECD and BRICS countries

The paper aims to define the optimal thresholds of publications and Research and Development (R&D) expenditure and to investigate their impacts on patenting in OECD and BRICS countries. To do so, we use a dataset of 25 countries divided into two country sub-samples for the period 1996–2013, employing the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model. The results indicate that the threshold of publications after which patenting activity is promoted is 8417 publications for the OECD countries and 20,848 for the BRICS countries, while the share of R&D in % of GDP should not exceed 1.683% for the OECD countries and 0.975% for the BRICS countries.     

R&D efficiency and heterogeneity – a latent class application for the OECD

Expenditures devoted to research and development (R&D) are scarce and thus need to be used as efficiently as possible given the financial constraints countries are facing. This article assesses the relative efficiency of R&D expenditures for 26 OECD member countries and two nonmember countries. As countries differ in their national innovation systems and states of economic development and industrialization, e.g. transition economies in Eastern Europe versus Asian countries versus Anglo-Saxon countries, the measurement of R&D efficiency needs to consider differences in the technology of knowledge production. By means of a latent class model for stochastic frontiers, we relax the assumption of a homogeneous technology frontier and model technological differences in knowledge production among countries. Empirical evidence suggests the existence of different classes stressing the importance of accounting for countries’ disparities within R&D efficiency analysis.     

Renewable energy innovations in Europe: a dynamic panel data approach

We investigate the determinants of renewable energy R&D intensity and the impact of renewable energy innovations on firm performance, using several dynamic panel data models. We estimate these models using a large data set of European firms from 19 different countries, with some patenting activity in areas related to renewable energies during the 1987 to 2007 period. Our results confirm our priors on the determinants of the rapid development of renewable energy R&D intensity during the past decades. Additionally, we find evidence that renewable patent intensity has a significant dynamic impact on the stock market value of firms.     

The pattern of international patenting and technology diffusion

The article focuses on the impact of R&D expenditure on labour productivity using international patent applications as a technology diffusion indicator. Considering the relationship between research and productivity, the pattern of international patenting reflects the channel between the source and the destination of transferred technology. Accounting for nonstationarity and cointegration, I find that patent-related foreign R&D spillovers are present for a panel of 18 OECD countries. Moreover, nonG7 OECD countries benefit more from foreign rather than domestic R&D activities. Estimates also show that there is no significant spillover effect from bilateral trade, but confirm the impact of FDI on domestic labour productivity.     

Measuring universities’ R&D performance in China’s provinces: a multistage efficiency and effectiveness perspective

ABSTRACT

Evaluating universities’ R&D performance can serve as a tool for policymakers, enabling them to identify the best R&D practitioners for benchmarking and develop strategies for enhancing performance by highlighting areas of weakness. This study divides universities’ R&D performance into two dimensions: efficiency and effectiveness. We employ a network data envelopment analysis approach to measure universities’ R&D efficiency, and separately use a multi-index comprehensive evaluation method to assess their R&D effectiveness from a multistage perspective. We calculate the comprehensive R&D performance of universities in 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2014. An analysis of temporal variation reveals that universities’ R&D performance in some provinces improved rapidly, increasing gaps in performance as a whole. The spatial pattern for the 30 provinces shows that universities in provinces with medium or strong R&D performance are mainly in coastal provinces and central areas in China. Finally, universities’ R&D activities are considered ‘efficient and effective’ only in a small number of provinces, while in most provinces, these activities can generally be considered ‘less efficient and effective.’ Hence, universities in provinces with different R&D performance modes should implement targeted improvement strategies according to their characteristics.     

Inventing together: exploring the nature of international knowledge spillovers in Latin America

This paper studies the nature, sources and determinants of international patenting activity in Latin American countries (LACs) and examines the extent to which LACs benefit from R&D that is performed in the G-5 countries (France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States). By using patents and patent citations from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, we trace sectoral knowledge flows from G-5 countries to LACs. We study the impact of three channels of knowledge flows: foreign R&D, patent citation-related spillovers, and face-to-face contact spillovers. Our results, based on data for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, suggest that international knowledge spillovers from the G-5 countries were a significant determinant of inventive activity during the period 1988–2003. We find that the stock of ideas produced in the USA has a strong impact on the international patenting activity of these countries. Moreover, controlling for US-driven R&D effects, bilateral patent citations and face-to-face relationships between inventors are both important additional mechanisms of knowledge transmission. Some of our results suggest that the latter mechanism is more important than the former.     

New evidence on the firm-university linkages in Europe. The role of meritocratic management practices

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the determinants of university-industry links in five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK), using internationally comparable firm-level data for the period 2007–2009. Besides the usual firm-specific variables, it examines the role of meritocratic management practices in firms’ decisions to collaborate in R&D. Firm innovative efforts, the export status and the R&D government support are positively related to business-university links in almost all countries, human capital and firms’ size in two out of five countries under scrutiny, while belonging to science-based sectors does not seem to play a significant role in all countries but Italy. Importantly, we find that meritocratic managerial practices positively affect the firm-university nexus in Germany, France and the UK, while meritocracy does not appear to enhance businesses’ R&D collaboration in Italy and in Spain.     

A comparative analysis of the change in R&D efficiency: a case of R&D leaders in the technology industry

This paper measures the cumulative change in research and development (R&D) efficiency of globally leading R&D companies in the technology industry. We use Data Envelopment Analysis /Malmquist index to analyse 49 such companies. The change in R&D efficiency is analysed by decomposing the Malmquist index into ‘catch-up’ and ‘frontier shift’ indices, and by comparing cumulative indices to those at the starting period. Those cumulative indices are obtained at both a firm and an industry level. Results indicate that the overall R&D efficiency of these globally leading R&D companies declined slightly during the period 2007–2013. At a firm level, this study determines in detail how the trend of each firm in R&D activities differs from other companies.     

Research and development and labour productivity: do high-tech firms exhibit labour- or capital-saving technical change?

Employment and output in the advanced technology sectors have generally exhibited above-average growth for more than two decades. While this industry accounts for a relatively small share of total employment, the majority of private sector research and development (R&D) expenditures in the US is concentrated within seven sub-sectors. However, little attention has been paid as to whether high-tech productivity exhibits Hicksian capital or labour ‘savings’ bias or tendency to displace either factor input over time. Biased technical change can occur as economies transition between growth regimes. An augmented production function is employed to analyse the additional impact of R&D activity on firm-level labour productivity. A panel data set comprised of high-tech firms located across the advanced economies, China and India from 1990 to 2013 is used in the analysis. Labour-saving technical change was present across the advanced technology sectors and most countries. The expanded models of labour productivity that used fixed effects with lagged regressors confirmed the prior results as well as finding that R&D per employee, relative R&D intensity and firm market share contribute to firm-level labour productivity growth across countries and sectors. Additional support was found for diminishing returns to scale but not for R&D spillover effects.     

The impact of technology intermediaries on firm cognitive capacity additionality

Whereas the provision of R&D subsidies has been central to public policy for many years, governments have recently become increasingly involved in stimulating cooperation for innovation and R&D. In many countries, financial support for technology intermediaries has become one of the key measures of indirect public support. However, little research has assessed the impact of indirect policy measures. In this paper, we shed light on the conditions under which technology intermediaries contribute to knowledge and networking outcomes generated by the firms that call upon them. We hereby focus on firm network and competence additionality as measures for cognitive capacity additionality and study the impact of technology intermediaries on firms. In doing so, we distinguish between R&D and R&D related activity technology intermediaries engage in. The results indicate that absorptive capacity of the technology intermediary does not affect cognitive capacity additionality generated by firms in R&D activities, while the results for R&D related activities are mixed and depending on the type of cognitive capacity additionality studied. The absorptive capacity of firms does not directly affect cognitive capacity additionality, but the results of mediation analysis show that firms with higher levels of absorptive capacity use the services of the technology intermediary more intensively, and subsequently generate higher levels of cognitive capacity additionality.     

Innovation under the Climate Wise program

This paper examines the impact of participation in the Climate Wise program, one of the largest voluntary programs enacted in the US, on innovative activity by firms. In operation from 1993 to 2000, the Climate Wise program was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by promoting innovation in energy efficiency and energy related activities. We begin by examining what types of firms were most likely to participate in this voluntary initiative. We find that the Climate Wise program was attractive to large firms, more R&D intensive firms, and firms with more financial resources. To consider the impact of Climate Wise participation on the innovative behavior of firms, we investigate whether participants and non-participants differed in the number of successful environmental and non-environmental patent applications between 1993 and 2003. We find some evidence that participation in the Climate Wise leads to a change in environmental patenting but only among less R&D intensive firms.     

The missing link between innovation and performance in Brazilian firms: a panel data approach

This study aims to verify if there is a positive relationship between innovation and productivity and/or profit in Brazil using a recursive model in line with the Crépon, Duguet and Mairesse (CDM) model. Using a rich combination of three databases, this paper considers a sample of more than 10,000 Brazilian industrial firms and the period 2001–2008. Besides using R&D expenditure as a measure of innovation input, this study also tests the technical-scientific personnel stock as a more appropriate measure of innovative effort in emerging countries. This variable considers the tacit knowledge intrinsic to the worker and corrects a possible measurement error bias in the R&D expenditure variable. The empirical strategy uses a reduced form of the CDM model in a panel data structure to provide consistent estimates as it controls for selectivity, simultaneity and endogeneity due to unobserved firm effects. There are still few studies that apply the CDM model for panel data, especially regarding developing countries. The main results suggest that technical-scientific workers positively affect the firms’ probability to innovate while R&D expenditure has no effect. The results also highlight the absence of the effect of innovation on productivity and profit, suggesting a missing link between innovative efforts and Brazilian firms’ performance.     

Strategic Rivalry With Spillovers Within Segmented Versus Integrated Markets

We consider a two-stage game with firms investing in R&D in the first stage while competing [a] la Cournot in the second stage. The firms are located in two countries, which are either segmented or integrated. R&D spillovers occur between firms located in the same country as well as between firms located in different countries.

We first examine the consequences of market integration on the impact of national and international R&D spillovers on innovative efforts, effective R&D, profits and total welfare. Comparing the resulting equilibrium levels, we subsequently conclude that market integration always leads to higher R&D investments and output if international R&D spillovers are limited, while the welfare consequences are ambiguous. Finally, we also analyze the welfare maximization problem of a ‘constrained social planner who can only decide on the level of R&D spillovers.     

Innovation strategy and the patenting behavior of firms

This paper investigates whether firms’ innovation strategies affect their patenting behavior, as measured by both the probability of having a patent portfolio and the number of active patents held. Three main dimensions of an innovation strategy are taken into account: the relative importance of basic research, applied research and development work in total R&D activities, the product or process orientation of innovation efforts, and the extent to which firms enter into collaborative R&D with other institutions. The major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) taking into account the various dimensions of an innovation strategy turns out to approximate the patenting behavior of firms better than the traditional Schumpeterian hypotheses related to firm size and market power; (2) there is a positive relationship between the patent portfolio of firms and an outward-oriented innovation strategy characterized by R&D partnerships with external organizations - scientific institutions and competitors in particular; (3) process-oriented innovators patent less than product-oriented innovators; (4) a stronger focus on basic and applied research is associated with a more active patenting behavior; (5) firms that perceive high barriers to innovation (internal, risk-related or external barriers) have smaller patent portfolios; (6) the perceived limitations of the patent system do not significantly influence the patenting behavior, suggesting that firms patent for other strategic reasons than merely protecting innovation rents.