What factors determine innovation performance in emerging economies? Evidence from China

Although the literatures on international trade, FDI and R&D have assisted significantly in improving our understanding regarding the determinants of innovation performance, there has been little research concerning the way in which each informs the other. Integrating theoretical developments from all three literatures, we propose and test a multidimensional conceptual framework that allows us to explain more fully what determines innovation performance in emerging economies. Testing the framework against a recently constructed industry-level dataset for China, the empirical analysis indicates that it has significant power in explaining variations in innovation performance. Nevertheless, our findings also show that factors such as international trade, FDI and R&D do not always have positive consequences. Rather, they indicate that their effects are moderated by technological opportunities and the level of foreign presence, implying that previous mixed findings regarding the role of international trade, FDI and R&D may be the result of incomplete theorizing about the factors that moderate the relationship between innovation performance and these factors.     

R&D spillovers through trade in a panel of OECD industries

This paper investigates the significance of Research and Development (R&D) spillovers through intra- and international trade in intermediate goods for productivity growth in a panel of OECD industries during 1973–1994. In the model, four different sources of R&D are identified: R&D conducted in the particular industry itself, R&D conducted in the same industries in other countries, R&D conducted in other domestic industries, and R&D conducted in other foreign industries. I find that among R&D sources the most important contributions to productivity growth come from the domestic R&D efforts. Here, own R&D is important for both domestic innovation and for the productivity catch-up process. Evidence that international R&D spillovers also have significant effects on productivity growth is found to be less robust. My analysis also shows that human capital affects productivity directly as a factor of production.     

The Effect of R&;D Intensity on Corporate Social Responsibility

This study examines the impact that research and development (R&D) intensity has on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We base our research on the resource-based view (RBV) theory, which contributes to our analysis of R&D intensity and CSR because this perspective explicitly recognizes the importance of intangible resources. Both R&D and CSR activities can create assets that provide firms with competitive advantage. Furthermore, the employment of such activities can improve the welfare of the community and satisfy stakeholder expectations, which might vary according to their prevailing environment. As expressions of CSR and R&D vary throughout industries, we extend our research by analysing the impact that R&D intensity has on CSR across both manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. Our results show that R&D intensity positively affects CSR and that this relationship is significant in manufacturing industries, while a non-significant result was obtained in non-manufacturing industries.     

The impact of R&D on value added for domestic and foreign firms in a newly industrialized economy

This study compares the impact of R&D on value added between domestic and foreign firms in Singapore. The analysis is based on a comprehensive panel database from 1993 to 1999 provided by the Singapore Government. Our results found that R&D investments of foreign firms generated higher value added than those of domestic firms, and that the difference in value added contributed by R&D was moderated by the type of R&D and the technological level of industry. The study supports the argument that the ownership advantages possessed by foreign firms, relative to domestic firms, have positive effects on R&D performance.     

Moving up or moving out? A unified theory of R&D, FDI, and trade

This paper introduces industrial heterogeneity in R&D productivity into the quality-ladder model of the North-South trade to study how firms' choices made between R&D and foreign direct investment (FDI) vary across industries, and how such choices consequently determine the evolution of comparative advantage and trade. It shows that trade reveals product-cycle dynamics in medium-tech industries but remains static in others. High-tech industries experience continued innovation in the North with no migration of product lines. Medium- and low-tech industries migrate South via FDI to exploit low production costs with the South then replacing the North as the dominant exporter. However, medium-tech industry production eventually shifts back to the North when superior products are marketed by Northern innovators, making the end of one complete product cycle and the start of the next. Because of marginal R&D productivity, the relocated low-tech industries are not presented with the option of moving up and thus stagnate.     

Services vs. Manufacturing – How Does Foreign and Domestic Sales Impact on Their R&D?

While the distinction between manufacturing and services becomes increasingly blurred to some observers, we find, using a panel of Swedish firms, clear evidence that foreign sales (exports) are more important than domestic sales for stimulating R&D. This is particularly clear for manufacturing and this importance of foreign sales has increased over time, simultaneous to an opening up of the Swedish economy. Even though service industries have seen an increase in both R&D and trade over time, it is thus mainly manufacturing that has benefited from increased possibilities for absorptive capacity. This result suggests a clear dichotomy between manufacturing and services in terms of how they react to trade and how they turn towards the foreign market vs. the domestic market to find stimuli for innovation.     

Organizational design of R&D after mergers and the role of budget responsibility

We consider an innovation contest between n firms in the presence of knowledge leakages from an innovating firm to its rivals. Our analysis focuses on the effects of these knowledge spillovers on merger activities between firms. In particular, we are interested in how different organizational designs of R&D after mergers affect profits of firms taking part in a merger and profits of their non-merging rivals. Three organizational arrangements are analyzed: first, a fusion of R&D departments in which the newly merged firm decides to close down one of the previously two R&D departments. Second, a profit center arrangement in which the newly merged firm keeps the old R&D departments as fully functional entities with a sovereign budget responsibility at each of the two departments. Third, a multisubsidiary organizational form in which the newly merged firm still keeps the old R&D departments but with restricted budget responsibility in the sense that they are forced to determine cooperatively their R&D budgets in order to maximize overall firm’s profits. It turns out that the different organizational designs of R&D after the merger and the budget responsibilities have major impacts on merger outcomes.     

Advertising and R&D investments in the wealth-maximizing firm

Advertising and R&D outlays are more similar to than different from capital outlays in modern corporations. All three can properly be thought of as investments, and can be ranked and evaluated using the tools of modern capital budgeting. One problem with bringing advertising and R&D outlays into the same planning framework as capital outlays is the constraints implicitly imposed by suppliers of external capital on the use of funds they advance. These constraints basically restrict the use of external funds to capital projects. A simple model is constructed of the cash flow-maximizing firm faced with both market and internal funds constraints. This model shows that marginal productivity rules evolve for these outlays and that a multiplier process is present in the movement of advertising and R&D from one equilibrium to another. Implications of this view of advertising and R&D for financial managers are discussed.     

Globalization, R&D and the iPod Cycle

This paper constructs a dynamic scale-free North-South model of trade with endogenous innovation. In the North a local-sourcing-targeted race and an outsourcing-targeted R&D race take place simultaneously within each industry. The former results in the winner firm manufacturing in the North, while the latter culminates in the winner firm's immediate outsourcing to the South, generating the iPod cycle. We study three aspects of globalization: reductions in the resource-requirement in outsourcing-targeted R&D, increased subsidies to outsourced production, and reduced Southern imitation due to TRIPs. Each event boosts outsourcing-targeted R&D and increases the frequency of iPod cycles. The aggregate innovation rate rises despite a possible fall in local-sourcing-targeted R&D, and the North-South relative wage decreases.     

Sweating the Assets: Asset Leanness and Financial Performance in the Motor Carrier Industry

Originally adopted by the automotive manufacturers, lean management practices have since been applied to many other manufacturing industries. This study reviews the different theoretical perspectives on the leanness‐performance relationship in the context of the motor carriage industry. Drawing on both the lean management in logistics and organizational slack literatures, we develop hypotheses addressing the link between asset leanness and financial performance. These hypotheses are empirically tested using a comprehensive panel data set of 1,172 firm‐quarter observations from the U.S. publicly traded truckload motor carriers. Initially expecting an inverted U‐shaped relationship between asset leanness and performance, findings indicated a U‐shaped relationship, both for carriers' total assets and the subset of trailer assets.     

Technical performance and firm size: Analysis of patents and publications of U.S. firms

This study focuses on the scientific output of firms of different sizes in different industries in the U.S. Both patents, and papers and publications are used as measures of technical output. Data from two samples of firms, one consisting of 225 large firms (annual sales at least $250 million and minimum annual R&D budget of $1 million) and the other consisting of 248 small and medium sized firms (annual sales between $10 to $200 million and annual R&D budget at least $10 thousand) have been presented here. The study shows that determinants of R&D expenditure are different in firms of different sizes. For the large firms, R&D expenditure depends on net income as well as its size, measured in terms of annual sales. For small size firms, R&D expenditure is closely related with sales, rather than the net income. For large firms, R&D expenditure is related to both sales and income, the latter being more important than the former. The two output measures, patents and papers are correlated, but the correlation is not a very strong one for small firms. Patent and papers are correlated significantly with both R&D expenditure as well as annual sales. The firm's growth is not linked with patents. On the contrary, there is a negative relationship between patent and R&D growth and patent and income growth in the case of small firms. Papers are not linked with growth variables for small firms. Finally, this study confirms the hypothesis that small firms are more productive in innovation than the large firms. Small firms are more efficient than their larger competitors in terms of patents and papers per million dollars of R&D expenditure.     

Innovation investment,competitiveness, and performance in industrial firms

Intangible assets and research and development (R&D) expenditure are essential instruments in a firm's competitive productivity and profitability strategy. The relationship between productivity, tangible and intangible investments, and R&D expenditure has given rise to much analysis concerning the importance of the role played by intangible investment in the achievement of higher competitiveness. Using the Spanish database of the Fundación Empresa Pública‐Ministerio Industria (FUNEP) for the period 1991–2001, with an average of 1,800 firms per year taken from 20 industries and classified in six sectoral groups, we compare the possible relationship of the former variables with firms' profitability and productivity. The empirical results obtained show the importance of tangible investments and unit labor costs for achieving high productivity levels. R&D expenditure and intangible capital are shown to be complementary variables of the aforementioned aspects that have a delayed effect on the productivity and profitability of Spanish industries. The relevance of the prior variables differs according to whether we are referring to industrial sectors characterized by important economies of scale, intensive in capital or labor. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Leveraging Research and Development: Assessing the Impact of the U.S. Advanced Technology Program

This paper examines the factors that affect a firm's chances of winning an award from the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) and the subsequent impact of the award on a firm's success in raising additional funds for its research and development (R&D) activities. Analysis of data from a survey of 1998 ATP applicants shows that proposals with higher ratings by technical and business/economic experts have a greater chance of winning an award. Further, the projects and firms selected by ATP are more willing to share their research findings with other firms, and tend to be those that open up new pathways for innovation through combining technical areas or by forming new R&D partnerships. Most of the non-winners have not proceeded with any aspect of the R&D project proposed to ATP and, of those that have, most did so at a smaller scale. Furthermore, the ATP award has prestige value for the winning firms; the halo effect from the award increases the success of these firms in attracting additional funding from other sources. Our conclusion is that the ATP is leveraging activities that have a strong potential for broad-based economic benefit.     

Goodwill Capital

The concept of goodwill or brand capital is commonly employed by analysts in business and marketing to measure the asset value of a company name or a brand name, and consequently among accountants and business analysts, but is seldom used by economists. The purpose of this article is to begin to develop the concept of goodwill capital by presenting an analysis of what it is and some estimates of its likely magnitudes. We define goodwill capital, like the capital arising from R&D and advertising, as a form of intangible asset, albeit one which cannot be readily related to past investments in R&D, advertising, and capital equipment. We compute estimates of goodwill capital by deducting measures of these other three forms of capital from a firm's market value. For many companies, goodwill capital turns out to be the largest of its four capital stocks. Roughly half of our estimates of goodwill capital turn out to be negative.     

Crossing Industry Borders: German Manufacturers as Services Exporters

Manufacturing firms increasingly engage in service trade activities. Microlevel data show that German manufacturers accounted for nearly 30 billion euros of service exports in 2005. I have found that particular construction, engineering and R&D services are exported. The machinery industries, motor vehicles and chemicals producers dominate the overall pattern. The types of services exported vary strongly across industries. Service exports of advertising, data processing, management and R&D services are found to likely support foreign affiliates of firms. However, these headquarter services are only infrequently observable. Much more important are construction and engineering services exported by machinery firms. These might represent installation and maintenance services complementing exported machinery. R&D services exports generally represent the transfer of knowledge and technology, which is found to be particularly relevant for motor vehicle producers. Beyond the support of foreign production of firms, R&D services might be relevant also in R&D cooperations of firms or when firms have partnerships with foreign suppliers or buyers of intermediate products.     

R&D Performance of UK Companies

This short article compares the R&D performance of the major British R&D spenders with that of other major R&D spenders world-wide. A performance index is constructed which adjusts actual R&D for firm size and the R&D intensity of the firm's main area of business. According to these performance measures, the R&D performance of these British firms is better than is suggested by the share of R&D in Britain's GDP. However, the article identifies a gap in British R&D performance - what may be called a third rank of R&D spenders - who are rare in Britain, but very common in Japan and the USA.     

The Effect of Management Policies on Plant-Level Productivity: A Longitudinal Study of Three U.S. and Mexican Small Businesses

To determine the influence of various management policies on productivity, various production functions of three small firms in labor-intensive, production-oriented industries are estimated econometrically and compared. Results from modified Cobb–Douglas functions indicate that the most important management-influenced factors are those related to job specialization, asset maintenance and technology policies, and changes in organizational structure. In addition, the results indicate that productivity is significantly related to a firm's overall profitability.     

Cooperative and non-cooperative R&D and trade costs

We examine the effect of trade liberalization on the level and mode of R&D in an international duopoly setting. Firms have the choice to invest in R&D either independently or cooperatively. A reduction in trade cost increases R&D irrespective of the mode of R&D. However, an increase in spillovers has ambiguous effects on R&D. More precisely, we find that an increase in spillover leads to higher R&D activity under cooperation but lower R&D activity under non-cooperation. Concerning cooperation versus non-cooperation, we find that firms prefer cooperation only if trade costs are low. Consumers are better off under cooperation if spillovers are high. We find that there can be a mismatch between private and social incentives. If spillovers are low and trade costs are low then cooperation might be privately profitable but socially undesirable. On the other hand, if there are large spillovers and high trade costs then cooperation may be socially desirable but not privately profitable.     

中国进口贸易技术溢出效应的实证分析

进口贸易是技术的一种主要溢出渠道。本文运用Lichtenberg＆Potterie（1996）方法构建国外R＆D资本存量，并将人力资本要素考虑在内建立进口贸易技术溢出的计量模型．选取中国和G-7国家的时间序列数据，分析中国国内R＆D资本存量和通过进口贸易获得的国外R＆D技术溢出对中国全要素生产率的影响。结果表明国内外R＆D资本存量都能显著地提升中国的全要素生产率。进一步的误差修正模型的分析结果表明，在短期内进口贸易的技术溢出对促进中国的技术进步存在一定的时滞效应。在此实证研究基础之上，本文提出了相应的政策建议。     

Innovation and trade with heterogeneous firms

This paper examines how trade liberalization affects the innovation incentives of firms, and what this implies for industry productivity. For this purpose we develop a reciprocal dumping model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous R&D. Among the robust results that hold both in the short run when there is no entry, and in the long run under free entry are that trade liberalization increases aggregate R&D when trade costs are low and decreases R&D when trade costs are high. Expected industry productivity rises as trade costs fall.