Import Competition, Productivity, and Restructuring in UK Manufacturing

We discuss the literature on the importance of entry and exitfor raising productivity growth. Using micro data for the UKfor a period from 1980 to 2000, we find that the share of productivitygrowth accounted for by entry and exit has increased considerably:from around 25 per cent in the 1980s to around 50 per cent inthe 1990s. We then ask to what extent increased globalization—measuredas sectoral import penetration—might have explained thisand find effects from both globalization and information andcommunication technology.     

Do micro start-ups fuel job creation? Cross-country evidence from the DynEmp Express database

Exploiting a novel database recently built from national business registers by the OECD with the support of an international network of experts, this paper investigates the growth dynamics of micro-firms (employing less than ten workers) across 16 countries. Results show that only a small proportion of micro-firms manage to grow beyond ten employees, but those contribute disproportionately to overall job creation. Econometric analysis focusing in particular on the role of age confirms that young micro-firms—especially those below 3 years of age—are much more likely to grow above ten employees than older firms. These findings are remarkably stable over the three time periods considered (2001–2004, 2004–2007, and 2007–2010), i.e., also during the Great Recession.     

Productivity, exporting, and the learning-by-exporting hypothesis: direct evidence from UK firms

Abstract.  Case studies suggest exporters learn from clients. Econometric evidence is mixed. We use firm-level panel data on exporting and productivity with direct information on learning sources, including clients. We find: (a) firms who exported in the past are likely to learn more from clients (relative to other sources); (b) firms who learned from clients in the past are more likely to have faster productivity growth; (c) the reverse is not the case; that is, past productivity growth is not associated with more learning from clients and past learning from clients is not associated with more exporting. These results are consistent with the learning-by-exporting hypothesis.     

Role of home and host country innovation systems in r&d internationalisation: a patent citation analysis

This paper has three novelties. First, we argue that any given R&D facility’s capacity to exploit and/or augment technological competences is a function not just of its own resources, but the efficiency with which it can utilise complementary resources associated with the relevant local innovation system. Just as asset-augmenting activities require proximity to the economic units (and thus the innovation system) from which they seek to learn, asset-exploiting activities draw from the parent’s technological resources as well as from the other assets of the home location’s innovation system. Furthermore, we argue that most firms tend to undertake both asset exploiting and augmenting activities simultaneously. Second, we use patent citation data from the European Patent Office to quantify the relative asset augmenting vs. exploiting character of foreign-located R&D. Third, we do so for European MNEs located in the US, as well as US MNEs located in Europe. Our results indicate that both EU (US) affiliates in the US (EU) rely extensively on home region knowledge sources, although they appear to exploit the host country knowledge base as well.     

Open for Ideation: Individual‐Level Openness and Idea Generation in R&D

Organizations are increasingly encouraging their scientists and engineers to source knowledge externally. However, it is unclear how the openness of individuals to external sources of knowledge affects their ideation performance, that is, their ability to develop new, useful innovative ideas for their organization, and which factors might moderate this process. Drawing on theories of combinatorial search, and using a sample of 329 R&D scientists and engineers working in a large organization, we demonstrate that individuals' openness to external sources of knowledge is curvilinearly related to their ideation performance. Openness provides benefits such as alertness and variety which contribute to ideation up to the point where increasing integration and approval costs cause negative returns to set in. We also examine how the R&D time horizon, ties to senior managers, and the breadth of individual knowledge moderate the costs and benefits of openness to individuals. We explore the implications of these findings for managerial practice.     

The knowledge bases of the world’s largest pharmaceutical groups: what do patent citations to non-patent literature reveal?

This article examines the knowledge bases of the world’s largest pharmaceutical groups by sales. It builds upon the concepts of knowledge specialisation and knowledge integration as the relevant dimensions along which knowledge bases can be mapped. The former is studied developing indicators of breadth. Breadth is measured by analysing the evolution of specialisation by scientific field over time. It hints at the widening range of bodies of scientific and technological knowledge relevant to firms’ innovative activities. Knowledge integration is studied developing indicators of depth. Depth is measured by analysing the evolution of integration across different typologies of research. It hints at the complex, non-linear interdependencies that link the scientific and technological domains. We develop the analysis on the strength of an original database of 33,127 European Patent Office patents and 41,931 citations to ‘non-patent document’ (of which 19,494 were identified as scientific articles included in the ISI databases) of the 30 largest pharmaceuticals groups during the period 1990–1997. The groups studied seem to have incrementally increased the breadth of their knowledge bases, moving towards the fields proper to the new biopharmaceutical research trajectory. At the same time, some of the groups studied exhibit remarkable depth in knowledge integration in particular fields such as biotechnology, biochemical research and neurosciences.     

International trade in services: A portrait of importers and exporters

We provide a novel set of stylized facts on firms engaging in international trade in services, using unique data on firm-level exports and imports from the world's second largest services exporter, the United Kingdom (UK). We show that only a fraction of UK firms engage in international trade in services, that trade participation varies widely across industries and that service traders are different from non-traders in terms of size, productivity and other firm characteristics. We also provide detailed evidence on the trading patterns of service exporters and importers, such as the number of markets served, the value of exports and imports per market and the share of individual markets in overall sales. We interpret these facts in the light of existing theories of international trade in services and goods. Our results demonstrate that firm-level heterogeneity is a key feature of services trade. Also, we find many similarities between services and goods trade at the firm level and conclude that existing heterogeneous firm models for goods trade will be a good starting point for explaining trade in services as well.     

Measuring and Understanding Productivity in UK Market Services

Many productivity studies, if they cover the service sector,commonly enter a caveat that the data are uncertain or justlook at manufacturing. This paper attempts to clarify what UKmarket-service-sector data are available, whether they shouldbe treated as inaccurate, and what conceptual problems mightmake measuring service-sector output so hard. Our overall conclusionis that most problems surround financial intermediation andbusiness services. In financial intermediation, national accountsconventions and adjustments make the output data very hard tointerpret. In business services many of the output measuresare employment based. Elsewhere, for example, retail and wholesaletrade, transport, and hotels and restaurants, the main problemis, in practice, lack of collected deflators. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: g.a.crespi{at}sussex.ac.uk; chiara.criscuolo{at}ons.gsi.gov.uk;j.e.haskel{at}qmul.ac.uk; d.hawkes{at}ioe.ac.uk