Embodied technological change in supplier dominated firms

This paper identifies the role of new capital goods as the main external source of innovation for supplier dominated firms belonging to traditional consumer good industries. After a brief survey on the role of inter-industry technology flows, the results of a field study are presented concerning the amount of technological change embodied in the new machinery acquired during the 1980s by a sample of Italian manufacturing firms producing traditional consumer goods. We show that industries and firms differ in the quality of technological change embodied in (or allowed by) new capital goods, and that such differences depend on industry-specific and firm-specific factors. The former primarily refer to product characteristics, the latter mainly to the age and the affiliation of the firm with an industrial group. The final section contains some policy suggestions for fostering the diffusion of new machinery (embodying technological change) among small firms and traditional industries.     

不同类型的技术创新对产业国际竞争优势的影响——基于制造业面板数据的分阶段回归分析

构建线性回归模型,利用1996—2010年我国15个制造业行业的面板数据,根据消费者边际效用递减规律是否明显将样本行业分为最终消费品制造业和装备制造业,同时将研究区间划分为1996—2001年和2002—2010年两个阶段,分组、分阶段地对不同类型的技术创新(产品创新和工艺创新)对制造业国际竞争优势的影响进行实证分析。结果表明:产品开发类创新对产业国际竞争优势的巩固与保持具有显著的正向影响;性能改进类创新和工艺创新对产业国际竞争优势的影响取决于消费者边际效用变化的特点。     

Industry dynamics, technological regimes and the role of demand

In this paper, we propose an industrial dynamics model to analyze the interactions between the price-performance sensitivity of demand, the sources of innovation in a sector, and certain features of the corresponding pattern of industrial transformation. More precisely, we study market concentration in different technological regimes and demand conditions. The computational analysis of our model shows that market demand plays a key role in industrial dynamics. Thus, although for intermediate values of the price-performance sensitivity, our results show the well-known relationships in the literature between technological regimes and industry transformation, we find surprising outcomes when demand is strongly biased either towards price or performance. Hence, for different technological regimes, a high performance sensitivity of demand tends to concentrate the market. On the other hand, under conditions of high price sensitivity, the industry generally tends to atomize. That is to say, for extreme values of the price-performance sensitivity of demand, we find concentrated or atomized market structures no matter the technological regime we are in. These results highlight the importance of considering the role of demand in the analysis of industrial dynamics.     

A technometric model for the assessment of technological standards and their application to selected technology-intensive products

This article presents a quantitative model for the assessment of technological standards, which is applied to a sample of Japanese data compiled in 1982 that gives technical specifications of high-technology or high- commodity goods in Japan, the United States, and in some Western European countries. The metric model provides a systematic and checkable methodology by which to assess the achieved technological standards and disparities, allowing for cardinal measuring on different levels of aggregation. It does not consider the economic features of the products and processes analysed. The application of the model to a sample of 43 selected products (e.g., polyester filaments, color papers, coaxial cables, powder metallurgical products, machining centers, assembly robots, videotape recorders, semiconductor lasers, automobiles, nuclear reactors, to name only ten) of Japanese, U.S., and European origin (more than 5,500 data) indicates that despite the overall lead of Japan and the United States over European technological standards, the relative position of European— especially West German—technology is above average with respect to key technologies.Through the analysis of all technical specifications available, we show that the Japanese position is strong in technologies related to resources and environment, whereas the United States is in the lead in computer- aided design technologies.     

中国工业企业绿色技术创新效率的测度与评价——基于超效率网络SBM-Malmquist模型分析

将绿色创新发展理念融入到工业企业技术活动中,已经成为突破环境和资源约束、推动工业可持续发展的关键。本文将能源消耗量、三废排放量等纳入研究框架,运用超效率网络SBM模型和Malmquist-Luenberger指数对中国各省份工业企业绿色技术创新效率进行测度与评价。结果表明：在2013—2018年间,工业企业绿色技术创新效率处于较低水平,省域间存在较大差异,但差异趋势逐渐缩小;我国工业企业绿色技术创新效率呈现出“东-中-西”依次递减的阶梯式空间分布格局,与东部地区工业企业绿色技术创新效率持上升的趋势相比,中西部效率水平不仅存在绝对水平明显偏低的特征,而且还表现出了增长幅度的差异;成果转化期的效率值低于科技研发的效率值,纯技术效率水平过低是造成两阶段效率不高的主要原因;我国Malmquist-Luenberger指数均大于1,整体发展态势良好,其中技术效率变化指数的增长主要依赖于纯技术效率变化指数。从三大地区层面来看,东部地区的ML(Malmquist-Luenberger)指数主要归结于技术进步（technological change,TC）指数的增长,而中西部地区的ML指数则主要依赖...     

On positional consumption and technological innovation: an agent-based model

Positional behaviour is arguably a source of social externalities. Remedies for this market failure are defended by some authors and rejected by others. One of the issues discussed is the role that the competition for positional goods may have in generating technological innovation. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of this process through the use of an agent-based model. Simulations show a plausible dynamics of the process of technological innovation as generated by consumption of positional nature. An interpretation of the results in the scope of the policy discussion in question is provided. The influence of key factors such as income inequality, the materialization of the Hirsch conjecture, and characteristics of the network of relative preferences, is analised. We also frame the potential interest of positional consumption and this model in particular in the context of the ongoing discussion among evolutionary economists on the behaviour of demand.     

Technological Profiles And Economic Performance In The Italian Manufacturing Sector ∗

This paper applies multivariate analysis to a rich data set on technological innovation, in order to identify typical patterns of technological change. To single out the dominant forms of technological behaviour, twelve variables have been selected approximating firms' technological sources and innovation results. Multivariate analysis was applied to identify six main clusters or dominant technological profiles. Each cluster was then interpreted on the basis of a larger set of variables concerning firms' technological and economic performance. The results confirm recent emphasis placed by scholars of technical change on variety of bchaviour in technical change and industrial organization and, more specifically, Pavitt's seminal attempt at a classification of this variety. However, our clusters are somewhat more numerous than Pavitt's, thus showing a more complex combination of technological input and output. Moreover, representative industries of each cluster are less easily recognized as a less marked sectoral characterization of clusters emerges. The latter result seems to imply that variety in technological change is also shown by the existence of different technological trajectories and strategies within the same sector. We suggest that the diffuse nature of recent technical change has given firms greater freedom of strategic choice among different technological strategies.     

The technological capabilities of nations: The state of the art of synthetic indicators

Composite synthetic indicators of the technological capabilities of nations have been used more frequently over the last years becoming a sort of Olympic medal table of the innovation race. The European Commission, specialised United Nations Agencies, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and individual scholars have developed several of these measurement tools at macroeconomic level. All these indicators are based on a variety of statistical sources in order to capture the multidimensional nature of technological change. This paper reviews these various exercises and: i) it brings into light the explicit and implicit assumptions on the nature of technological change; ii) it discusses their pros and cons; and iii) it explores the consistency among the results achieved. Most of the final rankings at the country level are fairly consistent, but significant discrepancies for some nations emerge. The value of synthetic indicators of technological capabilities for public policy, company strategies and economic studies is finally discussed.     

On semi-industrialized countries and the acquisition of advanced technological capabilities

The last decades have witnessed a breaking down of the hitherto quasi-monopoly in industrial and technological development held by highly industrialized countries. Man-made changes in comparative advantage due to rapid accumulation of human capital, development of technical institutions and public policies in support of enterprise development and innovation, have led to the emergence of advanced technical capabilities in a number of semi-industrialized countries. Study of selected instances of their technological achievement shows that they cannot be adequately interpreted as necessarily requiring the working of a well-integrated national innovation system. They seem to be instead path, or process, dependent and determined by the circumstantial convergence of requisite skills, appropriate institutions and supportive public policies.     

Localized technological change and factor markets: constraints and inducements to innovation

The recent advances in the economics of innovation and the analysis of how composition effects influence the introduction of technological change in a global economy, characterized by the variety of production functions in use and different local factor markets, provide new strength to the induced innovation approach. Developing the localized technological change approach, it is argued that because there are irreversibilities, limited knowledge and local learning, the introduction of new technologies is induced by the disequilibrium conditions brought about in each system by all changes in relative factor prices. The direction of technological change in terms of its specific form of bias and how it is introduced and adopted, however, reflects the specific conditions of local factor markets. Well-defined long-term technological paths emerge in each region and they depend on the selection process in product markets. The more rigid and idiosyncratic, the endowment of production factors and the system of relative prices are, the more specific the technological path of each region is likely to be. The divide between the microeconomic and the macroeconomic models of induced technological change is reconciled.     

Technological content of exports

A large body of literature argues that the characteristics of exports matter for economic growth and development because some goods trigger positive externalities or are subject to increasing returns. Thus, for policy purposes, it is important to know whether a country’s export basket enjoys these productive opportunities. They have been associated with technological content of exports. However, measuring them is not easy. Previous methodologies to account for exports’ technological content used either R&;D data or trade data. The former is used to account for knowledge-intensive activities during the production phase and the latter to identify levels of ‘sophistication’ of exports based on exporting countries’ characteristics. Building on these contributions, this paper combines industry-based and product-based indicators to circumvent some of the shortcomings of the received literature, including the product-industry controversy (i.e. are the actual activities during the production process or the product characteristics what better accounts exports’ technological content?). We use data from Uruguay on direct and indirect R&;D spending from public and private sources and also trade data to build the sophistication index corrected by quality. We contrast our findings with existing methodologies to highlight our contribution.     

推进我国科技进步体制和机制创新

科技快速进步是时代的特征,当代科技进步的特点是：高技术快速发展、不断创新的技术、众多领域技术并进、以当代科学新发现为基础的技术创新。近300年来西方国家工业技术的迅速发展,在于形成了和依靠了市场经济中促进技术进步的一整套制度安排和经济机制,面对世界科技创新的大潮,需要加强体制构建,完善经济机制,实现我国科学技术快速进步。     

How does technological innovation and diffusion affect inter-industry workers’ mobility?

Does technological change amount to accumulation of general, and so transferable, human capital? To approach this question I rely on a theoretical framework in which the “technology distance” between industries reduces inter-industry transferability of workers’ skill. Empirically, I use US panel data on individual intra-industry and inter-industry mobility decisions between 1982 and 1990, a period of rapid technological change in all manufacturing sectors, to estimate a mixed logit econometric specification that does not rely on the IIA assumption. I find support to the main idea that technological innovation and diffusion have different effects on workers’ industrial mobility patterns. “Knowledge spillovers”, differently from “rent spillovers”, indeed boost the chances of workers’ inter-industry mobility. Surprisingly, this is more consistently so in low-tech industries than in high-tech industries. Consistently with the expectations developed in the theoretical framework, in low-tech industries skilled workers respond more sharply to technology diffusion than unskilled workers.     

Functions of innovation systems: A new approach for analysing technological change

The central idea of this paper is that innovation systems are a very important determinant of technological change. We describe that the emergence of a new innovation system and changes in existing innovation systems co-evolve with the process of technological change. Therefore, it is necessary to create more insight in the dynamics of innovation systems. Traditional methods of innovation system analysis that mainly focus on the structure of innovation systems have proven to be insufficient. Therefore, we propose a framework that focuses on a number of processes that are highly important for well performing innovation systems. These processes are labeled as ‘functions of innovation systems’. After explaining this framework and embedding it in existing literature, we propose a method for systematically mapping those processes taking place in innovation systems and resulting in technological change. This method can be characterized as a process analysis or history event analysis. Clarifying examples are taken from the empirical field of Sustainable Technology Development.     

信息扩散、产业集聚与区域技术创新绩效——基于2005—2018年区域面板数据的动态分析

为了探索信息扩散、产业集聚与技术创新绩效间的动态影响关系,寻找影响地区经济发展及技术创新驱动的主要因素,使用2005—2018年我国区域面板数据,采用VAR模型、面板数据模型及状态空间模型,对信息扩散、产业集聚与技术创新绩效关系进行分析。研究发现：①产业集聚对技术创新绩效的边际影响力呈倒U形曲线,而信息扩散对技术创新绩效的边际影响力呈递增趋势,信息扩散对产业集聚的边际影响力呈线性增长态势,而技术创新绩效对产业集聚的边际影响力呈倒U形曲线;②不同地区信息扩散与产业集聚对技术创新绩效的影响效应依次为东部地区＞中部地区＞西部地区,且东部和中部地区的信息扩散对技术创新绩效的影响大于产业集聚的影响,西部地区的产业集聚对技术创新绩效的影响大于信息扩散的影响;③不同地区信息扩散与技术创新绩效对产业集聚的影响效应依次为东部地区＞中部地区＞西部地区,且东部地区的技术创新绩效对产业集聚的影响大于信息扩散的影响,中部和西部地区信息扩散对产业集聚的影响大于技术创新绩效的影响。     

Attributing technological bias to public goods

This note reports a modification of one use of the translog production function reported by Binswanger (1973, 1978). The method employed in this study recognizes that changes in factor shares over time are affected by a variety of decision variables including research and extension. In addition, some of the changes attributed to technical change may in fact be due to a change in the resource environment the individual decision maker faces, including the stock of public goods infrastructure. The study also investigates shifts in technological change which may be attributed to changes in the political climate.     

东北地区高技术产业技术体制研究

本文首先建立技术体制的框架模型,对影响和决定产业技术体制的四个主要因素：市场容量、创新独占性、技术内化性、社会动力进行分析。这些因素影响和决定着产业技术体制的结构和特点,而技术体制的结构和特点将影响到产业的产品结构、技术结构、生产结构、创新结构和竞争结构,进而影响到产业创新能力的提升和核心竞争力的构筑;其次,根据概念模型中对市场容量、创新独占性、技术内化性、社会动力的界定构建技术体制评价指标体系;再次,以电子及通信设备制造业为例,对东北地区高技术产业技术体制的发展规律进行探索,并对存在的问题进行深入分析,力求为东北地区高技术产业技术体制的建设提供理论参考。     

Institutional support for technological improvement — The case of Hungary

The technological “time warp” in which Hungary, like other Central and Eastern European countries, has found itself since the 1950s is at an end. This article concentrates on the transformation of institutional structures that support innovation and industrial technological development. First, it summarizes the types of institutions that support technological development. In a market economy, the process of generation and diffusion of innovation largely depends on the institutional and economic structure of the country. In a narrower sense, those institutions might be included in this group whose aim is wholly or in part to assist firms in experimenting with, understanding, and implementing new products and new production processes and improving quality. This article then details forms of inter-firm cooperation and highlights some empirical research findings based on three sectors — the pharmaceutical, machine tool, and car parts industries — which represent three different cases in the restructuring of Hungarian manufacturing. The main lesson of the study is that industry during its redeployment can create few demands for technology development institutes. Because of inherited structure, the accumulated knowledge of existing institutes and the supply and scattered demand of industry for technological support do not regularly coincide.     

基于因子分析法的大中型工业企业技术创新能力评价

构建了大中型工业企业技术创新能力评价指标体系,利用因子分析方法找出影响大中型工业企业技术创新能力的关键因素,将其归为内部创新因子和外部创新因子,建立了大中型工业企业技术创新能力评价模型。利用2009年国内大中型工业企业R&D及相关活动的主要指标数据,对不同所有制类型的大中型工业企业的技术创新能力进行评价。研究结果表明:企业办科技机构数量和消化吸收经费支出对内部创新因子的贡献最大;有限责任公司、股份有限公司和外商投资企业在技术创新能力得分上的排名在各类型大中型工业企业中居前三位。     

Beyond national and technological styles of innovation diffusion: a dynamic perspective on cases from the energy and transport sectors

This article argues that styles of innovation diffusion dynamics depend on both national and niche-specific factors and that their respective influence changes during the innovation diffusion process. Based on a review of approaches, dealing on the one hand with differences in national innovation and technology systems and on the other with process of niche formation and development, a theoretical synthesis and pattern of analysis is suggested for interpreting and comparing empirical findings from two different technology examples. The analysis of combined heat and power (CHP) in Germany, UK and the Netherlands, and of electric vehicles in Germany, Sweden and France allows us to identify different styles of innovation diffusion dynamics. These styles are determined by the relative importance of national and niche-specific factors in different phases of the process of technological change. Support in lent to the hypothesis that a style which combines impulses for innovation at both structural and niche is particularly conducive to radical change.