Types of cooperation partners as determinants of innovation failures

In this paper we analyse if specific R&D cooperation partners are related to an increase in the probability of innovation failures in terms discontinuing innovation projects. We distinguish between seven different R&D cooperation partner types, and we discriminate between product innovation failures and process innovation failures. Using German Community Innovation Survey data we find that, firstly, each type of R&D cooperation partner has a different effect on innovation failures. Secondly, we show that product innovation failures and process innovation failures are not affected in equal measure by the same type of R&D cooperation partner. Our results suggest that while R&D cooperation with public research institutes is significantly and negatively related to the probability to cancel a process innovation project, the coefficient is positive but insignificant for product innovation failures. Firms conducting partnerships with suppliers, however, run the risk of both product and process innovation failures. In turn, cooperation with competitors is positively correlated only to process innovation failures.     

社会结构、市场结构与企业技术创新

本文建立了一个基于社会结构与市场结构的技术创新系统模型,来解释企业的技术创新行为,认为企业是社会网络中的一个行动者,其技术创新行为是一种社会行动,它会受到人际关系和社会结构的影响.作为一种结果,社会结构会影响市场结构,从而两者共同作用于企业的技术创新过程.在这个过程中,对企业的社会资本分析是非常重要的.推动社会结构、市场结构与技术创新活动的协调发展是深化我国经济体制改革进而提升企业技术创新竞争力的重要途径.     

Capital structure and institutional setting: a decompositional and international analysis

The legal and institutional setting is more and more influential in firms’ financial decisions. Our article analyses firms’ capital structure in an international framework in order to assess the different level of debt use across countries and to identify both common and differential explanatory factors. Although the level of financial leverage is quite different, the factors that have traditionally driven capital structure decisions have much in common in all the legal and institutional settings. The performance and size of the firm, the assets tangibility and the growth opportunities have a relevant but differential effect across the different institutional systems. Consequently, our results suggest that the legal and institutional system of each country does not only affect firms’ capital structure but also creates the conditions to explain a differential effect of the common determinants of firms’ financial choices.     

Ownership structure,governance, and innovation

This paper tests the impact of firms׳ ownership structure on innovation in a context featuring pronounced ownership concentration and conflicts between large and minority shareholders. Using data for 20,000 Italian manufacturers, and accounting for the possible endogeneity of ownership levels, we find that ownership concentration negatively affects innovation, especially by reducing R&D effort. Conflicts between large and minority shareholders appear to be a determinant of this effect. Moreover, risk aversion induced by lack of diversification exacerbates large shareholders׳ reluctance to innovate. Family owners support innovation more than financial institutions, but the benefits of financial institutions increase with their equity stakes.     

The determinants and trends of China's exportable structure

The paper empirically investigates several key factors to determine changes in China's exportable structure. Based on this, it predicts the possible changes of China's export goods, especially of those with high value-added. It concludes that comparative advantage, market structure and the global integration penetration are the three most important factors to determine the exportable structure for each industry in China.     

Technology import,secondary innovation,and industrial structure optimization: A potential innovation strategy for China

To enhance people’s lives, China needs to maximize the opportunities of technological changes and conduct innovations to optimize its industrial structure in the context of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. The present paper analyses how industrial structure can be optimized by considering technology imports and innovations, and proposes an innovation strategy for China. We decompose imported technology into embodied technology imports (ETI) and disembodied technology imports (DTI). We found that ETI and DTI have negative effects on industrial structure rationalization and supererogation. Moreover, secondary innovations based on ETI depress industrial rationalization and supererogation, while secondary innovations based on DTI contribute positively. Therefore, DTI should be valued and the absorption of introduced technology improved. It is important to choose the appropriate mode of technology imports, to coordinate on the ratio of technology imports to secondary innovations, and to enhance the absorption of imported technology with the gradual improvement of IPR protection.     

Organisational structure and managerial innovation: the mediating effect of cross-functional integration

This study examines the linkage of organisational structure (along the mechanistic-organic continuum) to managerial innovation and the mediating effect of cross-functional integration on the linkage. It finds that the relationship between organic structure and managerial innovation is positive and mediated by cross-functional integration. The findings enrich our knowledge on the antecedents of managerial innovation. In addition, this study advances the understanding on the innovation implications of organisational structure and cross-functional integration by extending them to managerial innovation and illustrating how organisational structure matters.     

Social structure and consumption: on the diffusion of consumer good innovation

This paper presents a simple evolutionary model to study the diffusion patterns of product innovations for consumer goods. Following a Veblenian theme, we interpret consumption as a social activity constrained by social norms and class structure. Societies that allow for more behavioral variety will experience faster adoption of new consumer goods. We also find that the speed of diffusion as well as the saturation levels reached depend greatly on the structure of a society. Combining these two effects, we conclude that a social structure displaying behavioral variety and an even class structure fares better than any other social set-up in terms of the speed of adoption of product innovations and product variety. JEL Classification: D11, O31 This paper has benefited from comments by Robin Cowan and seminar participants at the University of Economics in Vienna, the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), University of Maastricht, participants of the EMAEE 2003 Conference in Augsburg, Germany as well as the Schumpeter Conference 2004 in Milan, Italy. We also would like to thank two anonymous referees for their constructive criticism and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply. Correspondence to: A. Reinstaller     

Patterns of alignment in alliance structure and innovation

Alliances are becoming an increasingly common strategy for product development despite the intrinsic tension between alliance logic and innovation logic. This paper investigates the development of alliance structures during the exploration phase of the innovation process. Based on a study of five service development alliances in the telecom industry, three patterns are identified by which the alliance structure and the innovation are brought into alignment. Such alignment seems to be a necessary condition for the transition into commercialization. The patterns identified are: (1) Learning about the innovation may trigger changes in the alliance structure; (2) Learning about the innovation may suggest changes in the alliance structure that are impossible to implement, however, thus triggering changes in the innovation; (3) Planning the future alliance structure may suggest changes in the innovation. Based on these patterns, some conclusions and implications are identified, for both theory and practice.     

Patterns of alignment in alliance structure and innovation

Alliances are becoming an increasingly common strategy for product development despite the intrinsic tension between alliance logic and innovation logic. This paper investigates the development of alliance structures during the exploration phase of the innovation process. Based on a study of five service development alliances in the telecom industry, three patterns are identified by which the alliance structure and the innovation are brought into alignment. Such alignment seems to be a necessary condition for the transition into commercialization. The patterns identified are: (1) Learning about the innovation may trigger changes in the alliance structure; (2) Learning about the innovation may suggest changes in the alliance structure that are impossible to implement, however, thus triggering changes in the innovation; (3) Planning the future alliance structure may suggest changes in the innovation. Based on these patterns, some conclusions and implications are identified, for both theory and practice.     

Capital structure choice and ownership: evidence from electronics enterprises in China

Empirical studies on capital structure mostly focus on listed companies and also on countries other than China. In this paper, we employ a panel dataset for 4,716 large and medium-sized enterprises in the Chinese electronics industry during the period 2005–2007 in order to investigate the determinants of their capital structure choice. Using the debt ratio as the dependent variable, we find that firm size and potential growth have a positive effect on the debt ratio whereas profitability has a negative effect. We show that decisions on the debt ratio are based on mixed factors that the various theories suggest. The unlisted Chinese companies which are unable to access to the securities market are prone to acquire bank loans as sources for funds which provides room for the modification of pecking order theory based on listed companies. As to ownership structure, we find that those Chinese electronics enterprises with higher portions of foreign equity tend to have lower debt ratios.     

Capital structure in South Korea: a quantile regression approach

Knowledge of how South Korean firms choose their capital structures has particular value due to the country's specific corporate structure and the role of leverage in the evolution of its financial crisis of 1997 and recovery. Using a large panel for the years 1992–2001, we investigate the evolution and determinants of Korean firms' capital structure and focus on differences between firms in different quantiles of the debt–capital distribution. Conditional quantile regressions show that while variables associated with standard models of asymmetric information costs are significant throughout the distribution, there are considerable differences, including differences in sign, in their impact on firms with different degrees of leverage. Those observed nonlinearities in the determinants of capital structure are consistent with a model of capital structure that includes both costs resulting from asymmetric information and an upper bound on the debt–capital ratio.     

Non-linearity in the determinants of capital structure: evidence from UK firms

We demonstrate that, by exploiting more fully the distribution of leverage, conditional quantile regression methods yield new insights into the choice of leverage ratio. For UK listed companies we find that not only is the estimated effect of the explanatory variables different at different quantiles of the distribution, but also that the effect of a variable changes sign between low leveraged and high leveraged firms.      

Corporate structure,ownership and the likelihood of innovation

An examination is conducted into the effect which external ownership and other aspects of corporate ownership structure have on the likelihood of innovation for a sample of manufacturing plants located in Scotland. Econometric estimation indicates that plant size, the presence of in-plant R&D, and non-UK ownership have a positive effect on the likelihood of innovation. Multiplant operation, market power and variations in industrial structure have no discernible effect on innovation. The finding that foreign ownership is positively associated with innovation contrasts with previous research conducted on manufacturing plants in Northern Ireland.     

Industrial structure and innovation - evidence from European regions

Whether the composition of industrial activity influences innovation is the key question of this paper. The analysis is based on a model that integrates different kinds of diversity measures aiming at capturing Jacobs externalities, a production specialisation measure aiming at capturing Marshall-Arrow-Romer (MAR) externalities and regions as well as sector specific variables. Tested with an extended sample of 153 European regions and 16 manufacturing sectors, the estimates suggest that both kinds of externalities significantly influence innovation, although the influence of Jacobs externalities is more important in the context of high density regions as well as for high tech sectors.JEL Classification: R00, O18, O31Lydia Greunz: The author wishes to thank Henri Capron and two anonymous referees for their useful comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was presented at Eindhoven Centre for Innovation Studies, January 2004, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.     

Capital structure and value of reported earnings: evidence from an emerging market

This article documents a nonlinear impact of capital structure on the value of reported earnings in India during the period between 2009 and 2015. Our results show that earnings reported by firms with moderate level of debt are more valuable than earnings reported by firms with low or high level of debt. Our results are robust across various proxies of capital structure and across various sub-samples. This article argues that moderate level of debt is associated with low-agency problems, while low and high level of debt is synonymous to high-agency problems. Differences in agency problems result in reported earnings that have very different levels of relevance.     

The determinants of capital structure in transitional economies

This study investigates whether capital structure determinants in emerging Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries support traditional capital structure theory developed to explain western economies. The empirical evidence suggests that some traditional capital structure theories are portable to companies in CEE countries. However, neither the trade-off, pecking order, nor agency costs theories explain the capital structure choices. Companies do follow the modified “pecking order.” The factors that influence firms' leverage decisions are the differences and financial constraints of banking systems, disparity in legal systems governing firms' operations, shareholders, and bondholders rights protection, sophistication of equity and bond markets, and corporate governance.     

中国财政支出结构与经济增长的Granger因果关系分析

财政支出与经济增长之间有联系,那么,财政支出结构的变化是否会对经济增长起到显著的作用,它们之间的关系如何,就值得研究。可运用单位根、协整及Granger因果关系检验等计量方法,分析中国财政支出结构与经济增长的关系。