Formal and informal external linkages and firms�� innovative strategies. A cross-country comparison

Firms increasingly rely upon external actors for their innovation process. Interaction with these actors may occur formally (i.e. through a collaboration agreement) or informally (i.e. external actors acts as sources of information). We analyze the reasons why firms consider it to be important to develop formal and informal external linkages in the innovation process by looking at the role played by firms’ innovative strategies and by taking into account the possibility that a complementarity or substitutive relationship might exist between formal and informal linkages. Data are from the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3), where we have access to firm level micro-data from Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK.     

Cournot equilibrium without apology: Existence and the Cournot inverse demand function

In a multi-commodity framework with absence of wealth effects, we prove the existence of equilibrium for Cournot oligopoly, and that the concept is completely non-ambiguous. We also obtain a uniquely defined endogenous inverse demand function, depending only on the competitive sector.     

Growth,Convergence, and Social Cohesion in the European Union

The aim of this paper is to analyze the economic and social cohesion in the European Union. There are different factors to explain the convergence process and besides, empirical findings are not conclusive. To the European Union, GDP per head interregional differences have decreased for certain periods but it has remained unchanged or even increased for others periods. The second report on the economic and social cohesion indicates that some decades are necessary to eliminate regional differences. These differences in regional GDP are mainly explained by differences in their productive structures, degree of innovate activity, communications structures, which depend on the relative level of transport infrastructures, and manpower qualifications. This analysis allows us to obtain some conclusions to the economic policies and the social cohesion. A preliminary version of this paper was presented in the 57th International Atlantic Conference, held in Lisbon, Portugal, March 10–14, 2004.