Knowledge organisation in R&D alliances: its impact on product innovation

Based on the knowledge-based view of the firm, this paper analyses how alternative configurations of technological relatedness in interfirm research and development (R&D) alliances influence specific types of product innovation. A longitudinal study of pharmaceutical firms provides support for the argument that complementary alliances contribute to the development of both radical and incremental innovation. Collaborating with partners that have similar technologies only enhances incremental innovation, although its impact is curvilinear. These evidences highlight the importance of designing a suitable portfolio of R&D alliances in order to develop different innovative competences.     

Assessment of innovative software technology: developing an end-user-initiated interface design strategy

Knowledge intensive services and, in particular, R&D services contribute significantly to innovation in firms. The objective of this paper is to find out which characteristics of firms explain the acquisition of R&D services and to analyse whether there are differences depending on the typology of the supplier (universities, technology centres and consulting firms). Three main conclusions emerge from the econometric estimations carried out with information from a survey of innovative firms in the region of Valencia in Spain. First, the results show that firm size and age matter in the decision to buy R&D services. Second, our results are consistent with the relevance that the literature gives to human capital in absorbing external knowledge. Third, innovation policy has a significant influence on the decision to acquire R&D services, particularly from universities and technology centres.     

Battle royal in biotechnology: R&D vs. product vs. process innovations

Companies regard innovation as a central element of their business. However, as not all innovation types are the same, the central question is: should their announcements bring about the same effect on performance? This article analyses potential differences in firm value derived from the innovation-type announcements ‘R&;D’, ‘product’, and ‘process’, made by intensive news-generating firms such as biotech companies. The empirical application shows a significantly positive reaction to innovation announcements, with the prospect of future innovation (‘R&;D’ investment announcements) having greater impact on firm value than ‘product’ and ‘process’ innovations. Firm experience also acts as a moderator in this innovation–performance relationship, which is particularly relevant for entrepreneurs who need to develop and send credible signals indicating the value of the firm's intangible assets to the market.     

Early Smithian economics in the Spanish empire: J. H. Vieytes and colonial policy *

Juan Hipolito Vieytes (1762–1815)was a hero of the May 1810 Revolution in Buenos Aires and one of the early economists in the River Plate area. Although Robert Sidney Smith dismissed Vieytes as a very minor figure in Spanish economic thought, this article attempts to show that Vieytes, an entrepreneur and journalist and only self-taught in political economy, was an early and able follower and divulgator of Smithian economics. He advocated free trade and liberal economic reforms, pointing at the competitiveness of the domestic workshops or ‘popular industry’ in a country with scanty population and extensive and cheap land.     

The Relationship Between Firm Size and Innovation Activity: A Double Decision Approach†

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between firm size and innovation activity using Spanish data at firm level corresponding to the manufacturing sector for the period 1990-93. This exercise is different to previous applications because we allow for different size effects in the decision to innovate and the innovation count equation, in the context of a double-hurdle approach. Several tests confirm the hurdle negbin model. We find that firm size is a relevant factor, although size effects are different in both decisions. A robust result from the different specifications estimated is the rejection of the Gilbert and Newbery hypotheses. We find out that the behaviour of firm size is neither linear in the decision nor in thc count equation. We also provide additional, and sometimes different, evidence to previous Spanish studies on R&D.     

Licensing policies for a new product

This paper studies licensing policies for the owner of a new product and addresses their welfare impact in the assessment of market failures. We show that the best licensing policy for the patent holder is fixed fee licensing with an exclusive territory clause. Consumers are also better off with fixed fees but do not prefer the exclusive territory clause. Social welfare is higher under exclusive territories when fixed costs are not too large. As for efficiency, the number of licences in the private market equilibrium falls short of the socially optimal solution. Our analysis discloses that (i) any policy measures aimed at enhancing the diffusion of technology, in terms of the number of licences, would be welcomed and, (ii) the permissive treatment received by licensing agreements with exclusive territories is justified.     

Interest rates,expectations and the credibility of the Bank of Spain

The purpose of the paper is to pinpoint the date of the change of monetary policy regime which occurred in Spain during the year 1984, when it moved away from controlling monetary aggregates towards interest rate targeting. The most likely date for the change is estimated and, surprisingly, there is evidence that agents learned about the new intermediate target quite rapidly.A week after the change, the term structure of interest rates showed how market agents attributed much more informational content to interest rate changes than they had previously. Two types of transitions are tried: a one-step and a gradual logistic swithing function.     

A parametric control function approach to estimating the returns to schooling in the absence of exclusion restrictions: an application to the NLSY

An innovation which bypasses the need for instruments when estimating endogenous treatment effects is identification via conditional second moments. The most general of these approaches is Klein and Vella (J Econom 154:154–164, 2010), which models the conditional variances semiparametrically. While this is attractive, as identification is not reliant on parametric assumptions for variances, the nonparametric aspect of the estimation may discourage practitioners from its use. This paper outlines how the estimator can be implemented parametrically. The use of parametric assumptions is accompanied by a large reduction in computational and programming demands. We illustrate the approach by estimating the return to education using a sample drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Accounting for endogeneity increases the estimate of the return to education from 6.8 to 11.2%.     

What circumstances lead a government to promote brain drain?

This paper aims to complement the existing theoretical brain drain literature, focusing on the interaction between education, skilled emigration and government intervention in a small open economy. This article first characterises different emigration patterns that may arise in equilibrium, then seeks the conditions that lead a government to promote brain-drain. The model shows that the government may promote skilled emigration among workers with intermediate skills even though the resulting brain drain decreases per capita income. Emigrants remittances outweigh the income they would produce if they did not emigrate. Therefore, the government makes less severe the fall in per capita income that follows the brain drain by encouraging emigration among those skilled workers who are more productive abroad.     

The role of permanent and transitory components in the fluctuations of Latin–American real exchange rates

Following the approach suggested by Engel and Kim (1999 Engel, C. 1999. Accounting for U.S. real exchange rates changes. Journal of Political Economy, 107: 507–38. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we estimate the permanent and transitory components of the real exchange rates in four Latin–American countries for the period 1957:01 to 2002:04. Results suggest that transitory component is the driving force of the real exchange rates in Argentina and Mexico. A principal role of the permanent component is observed in the real exchange rates of Brazil and Chile. Estimates probabilities of the high-variance regime allow to identify the principal events happened in these countries. This information is closely related to nominal shocks and therefore, it explains the significant role of this component in these countries.