meta paradigm change and the theory of the firm many seemingly unrelated debates on the theory of the firm are in fact part of a single deeper transformation of the social sciences as the foundational assumptions of 20th century social science have slowly been shown by science to be false new sub paradigms have emerged which cumulatively drop i theoretical assumptions about markets to explain firms ii epistemological assumptions about knowledge to explain diversity and iii metaphysical assumptions about causality to explain technical change debates occur across each of these levels

does entry size matter the impact of the life cycle and technology on firm survival a wave of empirical studies has recently emerged showing that smaller scale entry is confronted with a lower likelihood of survival than their larger counterparts the purpose of this paper is to examine whether the relationship between size of a firm when entering an industry and the likelihood of survival holds under different technological conditions and across the different stages of the industry life cycle the empirical evidence suggests that the relationship between firm size and the likelihood of survival is shaped by technology and the stage of the industry life cycle while the likelihood of survival confronting small entrants is generally less than that confronting their larger counterparts the relationship does not hold for mature stages of the product life cycle or in technologically intensive products in mature industries that are still technologically intensive entry may be less about radical innovation and possibly more about filling strategic niches thus negating the impact of entry size on the likelihood of survival

characterizing the technology firm an exploratory study abstract technology firms occupy a central position in modern economies they drive economic growth productivity gains and have created new industries and innovative products many will agree that technology firms are distinguished from others in their emphasis on technological activities since this observation is too general researchers suggested a variety of specific criteria and definitions a number of definitions of technology firms appear in the literature but many are arbitrary and simplistic and none gained wide acceptance similarly the number of characteristics suggested is large reflecting a variety of perspectives and interests in this case too no agreement exists as to which are the important ones also many seem to be interrelated capturing different aspects of the same underlying concepts this paper is concerned with the issue of definition and classification of technology firms we demonstrate the usefulness of a different approach to the definition and classification problem we rely on executives evaluations of their firms technology profile and level an analysis of these evaluations reveals the underlying dimensions the executives used in making their judgments we regard the dimensions we uncover as capturing the essence of technology firms and use them to classify the firms we study the specific characteristics the executives used to evaluate their firms were derived from a systematic scan of the literature thus the list represents the set of characteristics early researchers viewed as describing and defining technology firms the connection to early work enhances our findings validity and lends some credence to our belief that the three dimensions we uncover r d activities which are closely associated with a set of organizational elements and market conditions product strategy and corporate culture can be used by others to define technology firms and classify firms according to their technology level in our study we use these three dimensions to classify the firms studied we show that the commonly used practice of classifying firms as high and low technology according to the industry to which they belong is flawed our goal in this study is not to offer a new or better definition and characterization of technology firms or to offer the best approach to the generation of the classification criteria rather we demonstrate here the usefulness of a different approach to the problem while our approach does suffer from limitations it has important advantages we hope future studies will confirm not only the usefulness of our approach but also the general applicability of the specific criteria we identify in this study

an evolutionary approach to technological innovation in agriculture some preliminary remarks abstract this article proposes an interpretation of the process of technological innovation in agriculture we begin with a criticism to the idea of agriculture as a particular environment in economic analysis we argue that some dynamic concepts from economics of innovation especially as seen by the evolutionary literature can be used as an adequate theoretical reference to study innovation in agriculture we then suggest an interpretation in terms of technological trajectories in order to explain the complexity of the technological regime in agriculture finally we discuss the present stage of transformation in this technological regime and the perspectives of the arising new trajectories

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

the estimation of human capital by administrative archives in a static and longitudinal perspective the case of milan this paper focuses on the estimation of the latent variable human capital hc at disaggregated level worker by available routinely institutional data flows in particular we utilize the lombardy region administrative archive employment centers of the province of milan collecting information about careers of workers in the private sector of the milan area and administrative flows collecting mandatory workers individual income tax returns filed with the national internal revenue service first we propose and empirically estimate hc scores in a static referred to 2004 framework by means of a realistic measurement model within causal relationships among endogenous and exogenous investment hc indicators furthermore the model also specifies a set of concomitant indicators that not belonging to hc investment indicators have causal impact on endogenous variables and on hc scores too second we propose a longitudinal analysis period 2000 2004 aimed to investigate how workers earned income growth rates vary over workers educational levels and other personal characteristics the empirical results of both analyses confirm the characteristics of the italian job market denoted by marked inequalities and knowledge regarding the process of school to work transition characterized by a weak incidence of education on longitudinal trajectories of earned income

self fulfilling expectations and economic growth a model of technology adoption and industrialization in this work the authors construct a model that integrates both industrialization and endogenous growth they feature the role of technology adoption in sustaining growth and achieving industrialization the authors economy contains multiple equilibria for an initial history they found that only self fulfilling expectations matter in selecting an equilibrium whereas history plays no role the authors equilibrium is shown to involve a threshold property when the economy starts above this threshold the economy is able to sustain growth otherwise it is not both the rate of economic growth and the process of industrialization increase gradually and approach an upper hound copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the size distribution of innovating firms in the uk 1945 1983 a survey of 4 378 significant innovations shows that firms with fewer than 1 000 employees commercialized a much larger share than is indicated by their share of r and d expenditures innovations per employee have been consistently above average in firms with more than 10 000 employees and have become so in firms with fewer than 1 000 intersectoral variation in the size distribution of innovating firms can be explained as a function of r and d based technological opportunities and of technological ease of entry by user firms with principal activities outside the sector copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

gradual catch up and enduring leadership in the global wine industry the wine industry is an extremely interesting sector from a catch up point of view because the latecomers in the international market have changed how wine is produced sold and consumed and in doing so they have challenged the positions of incumbents until the end of the 1980s the european countries and particularly france and italy dominated the international market for wine subsequently significant changes in the market namely decreases in consumption by traditional consuming countries the entry of new inexperienced consumers and the increasing importance of large distribution have threatened this supremacy initially the usa and australia and later emerging countries such as chile and south africa gained increasing market shares in both exported volumes and value at the expense of incumbents however some of these newcomers e g australia have shown slower growth opening opportunities for newer entrants such as argentina and new zealand at the same time some of the incumbents especially italy have innovated challenging the leadership of france in key markets such as the usa in this article we investigate the different catch up cycles in the global wine sector that occurred between the 1960s and 2010 through a detailed analysis of export volumes values and unit prices we address issues related to the increasing share in the global market of latecomer countries and the relative decline of the incumbents as well as possible changes in the market leadership within these two groups

inter industry technology flows in the united states abstract this paper presents for the u s economy a technology flows matrix tracing 1974 industrial r d expenditures from their industries of origin to industries in which the use of resulting products and processes was anticipated the distinction between origin and using industries is crucial to understanding the links between r d and productivity growth a regression analysis reveals high social rates of return and substantial productivity impacts from r d attributed to industries of use

industrialization and substitutability a note abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between industrialization and technology in detail three main conclusions are obtained i the crucial factor for the existence of a poverty trap is the degree of substitutability among intermediate inputs ii the effects of technological progress in the manufactured good sector and the intermediate goods sector on industrialization differ with the degree of substitutability among intermediate inputs iii technological progress in the manufactured good sector and the intermediate goods sector weakens the lock in effect of historical events while strengthening the role of expectations these suggest that the degree of substitutability among intermediate inputs should be an important factor when we plan a development strategy

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources a systematic review of the literature this study summarizes the main conclusions from a systematic review of the empirical literature regarding the impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources universities research institutes and knowledge intensive business services with the aim to organize the literature we classify the different works according to the research question addressed i which firms use knowledge external sources ii do firms using knowledge external sources achieve better results and iii which firms benefit the most from using knowledge external sources stylized facts are that larger more r d intensive and high tech firms are more likely to use knowledge external sources and that use of knowledge external sources is associated to firms higher technical results less attention has been paid to the third question and evidence is not conclusive several recommendations for future research emerge first to take in greater consideration methodological issues so that potential biases in the results caused by sample selection and endogeneity are handled properly second to pay more attention to heterogeneous outcomes third to use continuous indicators of depth and breadth of links allowing for non linear relationships and fourth to extend evidence for developing countries and service industries

in defence of the linear model an essay this essay discusses the strength and weaknesses of the so called linear model lm of innovation it is a reaction to the habit of criticising it as over simplistic mechanistic or simply blatantly wrong we argue that while some criticisms are of course well grounded many others are instead based on loose interpretations and unwarranted assumptions in order to separate the wheat from the chaff this essay first presents a comprehensive description of the linear model and differentiates it from the caricature many refer to second we discuss the main criticisms put forward and argue that many of them are not at all destructive but can be easily accepted within a refined version of the lm third we discuss the policy implications often derived or said to derive from the lm to argue that the lm itself is distinctively policy neutral other assumptions have to be added to justify alternative policy implications

the role of technology in market shares dynamics the paper presents the estimation of an empirical model of market share dynamics for five industrialized countries and 18 industries the emphasis is put on the importance of non price factors of competitiveness whereas most traditional explanations rest on the influence of relative prices among the former type of factor the role of variables reflecting technological advantage is privileged in particular the role of innovations has received considerable attention in the literature on international trade as well as the literature on endogenous growth in this spirit the paper introduces patent counts and investment as explanatory variables for the export market share the results show that non price variables have an important impact on the determinations of long run competitiveness

ownership and firm innovation in a transition economy evidence from china we examine innovation performance of firms in a transition economy from an ownership perspective we focus specifically on the relationship between ownership structures and firm innovation performance drawing on data from 548 chinese firms we find volume of patent registration to be most strongly influenced by foreign ownership in the firm along with firm affiliation within a business group the influence of state and institutional ownership on innovation performance is positive but lagged contrary to expectations insider ownership leads to lower innovation performance and concentrated ownership has no significant impact our study has two principal contributions firstly we utilize a comprehensive treatment of ownership characteristics overcoming weakness in previous studies that have used a more narrow focus on ownership type secondly we contribute to understanding of how firms in transition economies build indigenous capabilities for innovation by drawing attention to the interplay of foreign and domestic control of agents innovation

globalisation of knowledge production and regional innovation policy supporting specialized hubs in the bangalore software industry abstract this paper is concerned with the changing role of regional innovation systems and regional policies in supporting the transition of indigenous firms in developing countries from competing on low costs towards becoming knowledge providers in global value chains special attention is paid to policies supporting the emergence and development of the regional innovation system in this transition process regional innovation systems in developing countries have very recently started to be conceptualised as specialized hubs in global innovation and production networks asheim b coenen l vang lauridsen j 2007 face to face buzz and knowledge bases socio spatial implications for learning innovation and innovation policy environment and planning c government and policy 25 5 655 670 chaminade c vang j 2006a innovation policy for small and medium size smes in asia an innovation systems perspective in yeung h ed handbook of research on asian business edward elgar cheltenham maggi c 2007 the salmon farming and processing cluster in southern chile in pietrobello c rabellotti r eds upgrading and governance in clusters and value chains in latin america harvard university press a specialized hub refers to a node in a global value chain that mainly undertakes one or a few of the activities required for the production and development of a given good or service or serves a particular segment of the global market in global value chains firms in developing countries have traditionally been responsible for the lowest added value activities however a few emerging regional innovation systems in developing countries are beginning to challenge this scenario by rapidly upgrading in the value chain there is however still only a poorly developed understanding of how the system of innovation emerges and evolves to support this transition process and what the role of regional innovation policy is in building the regional conditions that support indigenous small and medium size enterprises smes in this transition process this paper aims at reducing this omission by analyzing the co evolution of the strategies of indigenous smes and the regional innovation system of bangalore india

firm behaviour and innovative performance an empirical exploration of the selection adaptation debate innovation is a complex trade off between routinisation and change between reliability and accountability of firms and timely adaptation this innovator s dilemma confronts innovation theory with the question how to align routinisation with innovation induced organisational change and consistent performance obviously it is a complex issue dominant innovation theory neglects this subject due to its pro innovation bias while evolutionary organisation and innovation theory give opposite perspectives on this problem the adaptation perspective considers pro active behaviour as the best condition for innovative performance whereas the selection perspective advances inert firm behaviour as the best alternative to achieve successful innovations our research question focuses on the explanatory value of either the selection or the adaptation perspective for the innovative performance of industrial firms our empirical findings confirm the adaptation perspective and reject the selection perspective comparatively firm behaviour involving the highest risks and uncertainties e g high environmental dynamics and high levels of adaptive activity contributes most significant to the explanation of innovative performance inert risk averse behaviour conversely does not improve or even impedes innovative performance compared with other types of firm behaviour

the voyage of the beagle into innovation explorations on heterogeneity selection and sectors the aim of the paper is to assess heterogeneity of the innovation process using exploratory factor analysis on micro data from the third community innovation survey in 13 countries we identify four patterns that can be interpreted as research user external and production ingredients of innovation all too often it is assumed that how firm innovate can be represented by differences across sectors and or countries to put this proposition under scrutiny we partition variability of the factors scores into components identified by these higher levels sectors and countries matter to a certain extent but far more of the variance is given by heterogeneity among firms within both of them however groups of firms produced by cluster analysis account for much higher share of the variance which indicates that the most relevant stratification of the data cuts across the established sectoral and national boundaries we discuss implications of these findings for understanding of selection in evolutionary economics and for the literature on innovation systems

a survey of the literature on human capital intensive firms the aim of this paper is to provide an exhaustive survey of the academic research dedicated to the study of human capital intensive firms hcifs we use a bibliometric analysis based on the three widely used databases econlit science direct and wiley over the period 1992 2015 we are adapting a methodology developed in previous works to our specific object of study and we generate a bottom up clustering on keywords titles and abstracts our examination of the data sheds a light on five main clusters of works that respectively focus on 1 critical human resource management 2 intellectual capital assessment 3 funding risk and innovation 4 high skilled employees supporting economic development and 5 internal and external valuable social networks in a critical appraisal of our results we stress that the bibliometric analysis remains silent on how the different clusters are linked with each other based on our own appreciation of the hcifs literature we propose a further step in the identification of a central question linking up these clusters a transversal review of the five clusters reveals that hcifs appear as a network of specialized agents whose complementary human resources are decisive for the value creation process

firm technological trajectory as a driver of eco innovation in young small and medium sized enterprises abstract few studies have focused on green innovation in young small and medium sized enterprises instead research tends to focus on large companies with formal research and development departments studying the influence of the firm s current technological strategy as well as the regulatory framework as a key driver of eco innovation this paper proposes that the combination of a firm s technological trajectory and its current research and development strategy are key determinants of eco innovation the authors investigate these relationships with panel data on 212 young firms in spain analysing their innovation strategy and behaviour during their first 10 years of activity the results show that the firms cluster into four technological trajectories but only market oriented innovators engage significantly more in eco innovation these firms are characterized by a high use of formal appropriability mechanisms market opportunity recognition arising from cooperation and high knowledge cumulativeness this paper sheds light on whether and the extent to which a firm s technological trajectory is a driver of eco innovation it confirms that firms that search for opportunities and have a continuous collaboration with market players are more prone to develop eco innovations additionally it shows that path dependence occurs in the development of eco innovations in that a highly developed innovation capacity leads to additional green innovation in the future the findings indicate that young small firms need to develop innovation capabilities that also enable them to adopt advanced technology before striving to become greener the paper concludes that policies designed to stimulate cooperative networking with other market players an upgrading of technological capabilities and the adoption of new technologies are all desirable because they contribute to improving the environmental impact of firms innovations

the brazilian exports of labor intensive goods in the 2000s an analysis using the constant market share method abstract this paper aims at analyzing international trade in labor intensive sectors in the 2000s with a special reference to the brazilian case therefore we use the constant market share analysis to compare several countries export performance it was observed that asian countries emerged strengthened from this period brazil had a mediocre performance losing market share in global markets moreover competition from asian economies and even from the small central american countries such as guatemala and el salvador has undermined the penetration of brazilian exports in its major trade partners which are north america and south america

measuring innovation in tourism from the schumpeterian and the dynamic capabilities perspectives this paper offers a diagnosis of the state of the issue regarding the measurement of innovation in the tourism industry at the company level and some recommendations for overcoming identified problems the study addresses two central issues how existing secondary databases of innovative activity define the boundaries of the tourism industry and the degree to which these databases reflect the particular characteristics of this economic activity it is concluded that these analyses present serious biases and anomalies hindering the understanding of the situation at the micro level and complicating the issue of international comparability and the analyses do not capture the internal heterogeneity of innovative behavior of tourism companies from specific intra sectoral activities the problems concern inappropriate indicators and the need for survey methods to complement the development of innovation scoreboards in secondary sources the study concludes by detailing a set of proposals that should be considered in the context of a scoreboard to provide a comprehensive view of a tourism firm s technological and organizational innovations as well as its innovative capabilities combining schumpeterian theory and the dynamic capabilities based approach and also making cross national comparisons feasible

is demand pulled innovation equally important in different groups of firms previous empirical literature has tested the demand pull hypothesis and found that innovation may be driven by output using a balanced panel of 216 italian manufacturing firms 1995 2000 and checking for the path dependent nature of r d we find a role of sales in inducing r d however the demand pull effect plays a varying role for different sub samples of firms exporting firms liquidity constrained firms not subsidised firms and those not heading a group seem to be sensitive to sales in deciding r d these results have been obtained using a least squares dummy variable corrected estimator a recent panel data technique suitable for small samples

a matter of location the role of regional social capital in overcoming the liability of newness in r d acquisition activities laursen k masciarelli f and reichstein t a matter of location the role of regional social capital in overcoming the liability of newness in r d acquisition activities regional studies external knowledge acquisition is a precondition for firms competitive advantage however young firms exhibit a lower propensity to acquire external research and development r d than their older counterparts the paper explores the role of regional social capital in moderating this aspect of the liability of newness the results show that young firms operating in regions with low levels of social capital are less likely to acquire r d externally however this is not the case in regions with high levels of social capital suggesting that the liability of newness in terms of acquisition of external r d does not play a role in these regions

technological regimes and innovation in services the case of the italian banking industry abstract in this paper we propose a conceptual model to analyse innovations originating from the diffusion of information technologies in the banking sector we argue that technical change in this industry exhibits a revolutionary character a distinction is made between the mass automation regime focusing mainly on the mechanization of back office procedures in the 1960s and 1970s and the smart automation regime originating from the introduction of distributed data processing and network technologies and centered around the supply of electronic banking services a theoretical model is developed which emphasizes the crucial role played by demand pull variables in stimulating innovative behaviour under the smart automation regime in contrast limited importance is attributed to cumulative and learning by doing effects relating to back office automation at least for banks endowed with sufficient absorptive capacity the theoretical hypotheses are tested through an econometric analysis of the determinants of the innovative behaviour in electronic payment systems of a sample of italian commercial banks

measuring human capital and its effects on wage growth ever since mincer years of labour market experience were used to approximate individual s general human capital while years of seniority were used to approximate job specific human capital this specification is restrictive because it assumes that starting wages at a new job depend only on job market experience in this paper i investigate the effects of human capital on wage growth by using a more flexible specification of the wage equation which allows for a rich set of information on past employment spells to affect the starting wages in addition i endogenize the labour mobility decision in order to illuminate the effects of human capital accumulation patterns on wage growth i compare counterfactual career paths for representative individuals copyright 2010 blackwell publishing ltd

industrial policy changes and firm level technological capability development evidence from northern brazil summary much has been written about the impacts of the policy changes of the 1990s on industrial performance particularly in latin america most of the studies are based on aggregated analyses that argue for or against such reforms in the policy regime this study offers an alternative view to this debate based on a longitudinal empirical scrutiny of technological capability development in 46 local and foreign firms from three sectors in northern brazil there were inter sector and inter firm variations in terms of the manner and rate of capability development for specific technical functions overall the patterns of firm level capability development exhibited a positive response to the structural reforms but such responses were not a mere consequence of trade openness a combination of government policy foreign competition and intra firm capability building efforts proved essential for speeding up capability development in some of the sampled firms thus policies for accelerating industrial technological capability development in a developing area such as the one examined here would involve not only macro level incentives and competition but very importantly measures that facilitate intra firm capability building efforts

information and intellectual property the global challenges the paper analyses the contribution of golden papers seminal works whose ideas remain as fresh and relevant today as when they were first published decades ago and which continue to dominate academic discourse among successive generations of scholars the authors analyse why two works written within an industrial development context the simple economics of basic scientific research by richard nelson 1959 and kenneth arrows economic welfare and the allocation of resources for invention 1962 are so relevant in today s knowledge driven economic paradigm focusing on the papers application to current global policy debates on information knowledge and intellectual property they argue that while the context has changed the essential nature of innovation driven by widespread access to the ability to replicate and improve remains the same hence a focus on endogenous innovation policy is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago

the benefits of r d and breadth in innovation strategies a comparison of finnish service and manufacturing firms this empirical study compares the determinants of innovation in manufacturing and services through descriptive and regression analyses of sales from innovative products and services a particular focus is on the effects of r d investments and breadth in knowledge sourcing and innovation objectives the results suggest that contrary to earlier research r d investments play a statistically and economically significant role in service innovation we suggest that this results from the growing engagement of service firms in regular r d activity both service and manufacturing firms also benefit from breadth in external knowledge sourcing strategies in contrast breadth in terms of pursuing parallel innovation objectives appears to have detrimental effects on innovation in service industries we interpret the latter results through reference to service firms r d management capabilities managing multiple innovation projects is challenging and some service firms may not have accumulated the requisite managerial processes and capabilities to benefit from these strategies the available data provide support for this conjecture the detrimental effects of breadth in innovation objectives are significantly mitigated by regular r d activities copyright 2012 the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

invention and innovation in the chemical industry demand pull or discovery push abstract this paper describes a study of the determinants of the rate direction and scale of inventive and innovative activity in the chemical industry over the period 1830 1980 statistical data are interpreted in the light of case study material in three major sectors dyestuffs plastics and pharmaceuticals theories of technical change and economic growth particularly those of schmookler and schmpeter are examined in relation to this material on the chemical industry the findings suggest that the importance of demand pull and discovery push factors and the validity of schmookler s and schumpeter s theories vary over an industry s life cycle

capitalism as an engine of progress economists from marx to schumpeter have touted capitalism as an engine of technical progress but what kind of an engine is it what are its key components how does it work

exploring the processes of firm growth evidence from a vector auto regression this article offers many new insights into the processes of firm growth by applying a vector autoregression model to longitudinal panel data on french manufacturing firms we observe the coevolution of key variables such as growth of employment sales gross operating surplus and labor productivity growth preliminary results suggest that employment growth is succeeded by the growth of sales which in turn is followed by growth of profits generally speaking however growth of profits is not followed by much employment growth or sales growth quantile regressions highlight some asymmetries between negative growth and fast growth firms

cost and income based measures of human capital human capital is increasingly believed to play an important role in the growth process however adequately measuring its stock remains controversial in this paper three general approaches to measurement are identified cost based income based and educational stock based this survey focuses on the first two approaches and provides a critical review of the theories and their applications to data from a range of countries particular emphasis is placed upon the work of jorgenson and fraumeni 1989 1992 and some new results for new zealand based upon their approach are also presented

the production of human capital and the lifecycle of earnings variations on a theme in this work i enquire into the empirical validity and some implications of yoram ben porath s insights section ii answers the question are the shapes and magnitudes of growth in wage profiles largely attributable to human capital investments section iii tests the proposition that over the working age capacity wages decline before observed wages do implied timing of labor supply provides the test in section iv implications are drawn from ben porath s model for interpersonal differences and for the correlation between schooling and training

patterns of innovation and organizational demography in emerging sustainable fields an analysis of the chemical sector this paper examines the patterns of environmental innovation in the chemical sector and focuses in particular on detecting whether the rise of sustainable chemistry technologies sct has stimulated the emergence of new organizations this question is important to assess the extent to which sct are sustaining the technological advantage of industry incumbents or are creating opportunities for new firms aspiring to develop radically new environmental innovations we found that sct still represent a relatively low proportion of chemical technologies and that they have not stimulated in a significant way the emergence of new firms however the importance of new firms has grown in the last 20 years and their technologies seem to have a higher potential of radicalness than incumbents technologies this indicates that although incumbents advantage remains strong a small group of young firms has started to weaken such advantage moreover the important role played by research organizations in generating sct may signal that technological opportunities are expanding and that some governments in particular the us government are committed to develop sct these results suggest that if supported by effective policies technological ferment in the field which at the present appears still limited has a potential of growth

on resolving the dilemma of rent control this research examines the motivations for adopting rent control and discusses a policy alternative designed to respond to the political appeal of rent control while minimising the investment distortion capricious redistribution and administrative complexity of most controls the policy involves limiting regulation to those rents paid by households in the tenant population that are deemed unable to afford adequate housing all rental units in a jurisdiction register their rents with the relevant authority and are assigned a controlled rent landlords must charge the controlled rent only for eligible households but receive the difference between that rent and the market rent from the government the analysis considers the design of such a policy its behavioural incentives and some administrative implications there is also consideration of the appeal of this policy relative to both conventional controls and policies more popular in the literature such as a housing allowance

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

human capital measurement theory and practice in early 2010 the us economy sits in its most precarious position since the great depression of the 1930s at its height in 1933 25 of all workers and 37 of all non farm workers were completely out of work the unemployment rate in the usa is now over 9 5 1 as figure 1 indicates when the us economy spirals into severe recession unemployment cascades up as well periods of recession coincide with significant rise in unemployment and the two forces feed on each other taxing economic systems when consumer spending declines and capital stock markets endure significant loss unemployment spirals upward earned income tax revenue declines government expenditure on benefits for the unemployed increase consumer spending declines further and sales tax revenue declines housing values decline in a recession which causes property tax revenue to decline which causes a shortfall in municipal tax revenue so city budgets do not balance so more unemployment occurs now in the public sector the us and the world economy in general are still in the throes of such cataclysmic events even while this is written in the summer of 2009 europe s economy continues in a similarly dire situation with overall unemployment at 9 5 for the european union as of may 2009 2 interestingly australia unemployment hovers in the 5 8 rate range 3 the crash of the us economy has reverberated throughout the world and adversely impacted virtually every other economic system on the globe this sad fact is well known and undisputed by economists and social scientists throughout the world the us congress sits as this is being written in the summer of 2009 and debates an almost 1 trillion dollar healthcare package to assist in part in bringing the us economy out of crisis on february 17th of 2009 us president obama signed into law an 800 billion plus stimulus package significant debate in the usa continues as to whether the immense government spending and attendant increase in debt has done any good britain germany and other world powers are undergoing similar investments and debates hundreds of millions of these dollars are earmarked for projects to increase employment and increase the human capital hc of the world labour force on programmes such as educational loans and subsidies

transaction cost economics in real time this paper attempts to place the theq of the boundaries of thejirm within the context of the passage of time more precisely it resurrects and places in a modem frame some of the insights of the chsical and marshallian theories of organization the modem reinterpretation of those theories centers around the capabilities view of the jirm taken together with governance costs the capabilities ofjirm and market determine the boundaries of the jirm in the short run ovw time capabilities change as firms and markets learn which implies a kind of information or knowledge cost the cost of trandewing the firm s capability to the market w vice versa these dynamic governance costs are the costs of persuading negotiating and coordinating with and teaching others they arise in the face of change notably txchnological and organizational innovation in fit they are the costs of not having the capabilities you need when you need them dynamic transaction costs provide an explanation for vertical integration that is arguably more general than those dominant in the literature in the face of uncertainty and divwgent views ofthe future common ownership of multiple stages of production is a supwior institutional arrangement for coordinating systemic change asset specrfity is neither necessary nor suffient for this to be true dynamic governance costs may also affit internal organization it may sometimes be costly in 3 terms of persuasion negotiation and teaching to create within the firm capabilities readily available on the market indeed in cases in which systemic coordination is not 4 the issue the market may turn out to be the superior institution of coordination in e 2 genwal the capabilities view of the jirm suggests that we look atfim2 and market as alternative and sometimes overlapping institutions of learning 1 transaction costs in the long rzln and the short 9 x classical and neoclassical perspectives

a theory of price control price or rent control is but one of many forms of legislative action which interfere with private contracting in the market place to delimit the scope of my analysis i shall use the term price control to refer only to any set of regulations which satisfies the following three conditions first the control must fix the price or income terms of private contracts this categorically excludes any laws which regulate the distribution of income among the contracting parties on a share or percentage basis 2 second the control must involve no appropriation of proceeds to or from the government taxation and subsidization are thus excluded finally the fixing of price must not be associated with direct government sales purchases or manipulation of resources so as to maintain the regulated price 3 by this stipulation price support is also excluded even on such terms legal regulations to control price are still many and varied to evaluate our understanding of the class of phenomena which we seek to explain it is essential that we discover implications refutable by facts by this criterion the available body of economic theory pertaining to price control is deficient indeed the massive literature on the subject offers few such implications 4 an alternative approach to analyzing the observable effects of price control is presented here

specifying human capital a review of the measures of the stock of human capital used in empiricalgrowth research including adult literacy rates school enrollmentratios and average years of schooling of the working age population reveals that human capital is mostly poorly proxied the simple use ofthe most common proxy average years of schooling misspecifies therelationship between education and the stock of human capital based onhuman capital theory the specification of human capital is extended toallow for decreasing returns to education and for differences in thequality of a year of education the different specifications give riseto hugely differing measures of the stock of human capital acrosscountries and development accounting results show that misspecifiedhuman capital measures can lead to severe underestimation of thedevelopment effect of human capital

the roles of science in technological innovation abstract one of the central issues in science policy during the past decade has been the extent to which the national levels of expenditure on scientific education and research influence the standard of living this paper provides empirical evidence to show that the pay off from this investment in science is more complex and indirect than previously supposed

some determinants of cost distributions in the process of technological innovation abstract industrial research and development r d is a set of activities within the broader set of decisions and activities the process of technological innovation ti it is technology transfer commercialization of the innovation that leads to technology diffusion that permits production and employment expansion and hence economic growth an important goal of industrial policy firms managements and government policy makers should recognize the close relationships among the phases of ti and direct their policy planning budgeting and control decisions to the complete process many policies currently focus their attention to only one or a few points such as r d in this study we conducted a detailed cost analysis of a limited number of innovation projects and studied the distributions of ti cost over the process phases we find that almost half of ti costs are devoted to r d which implies that government support of this phase is important different cost patterns emerge when we classify innovations by industrial sectors firms sizes and project complexity complex innovations require larger and more variable risky r d budgets smaller firms need more assistance in technology transfer these are only a few important policy implications this study emphasizes the importance of post r d phases and concludes that differential industrial policy may be required for technological innovations

organizational change skill formation human capital measurement evidence from italian manufacturing firms basing on a job competition approach in this paper we provide a labour demand oriented measure of human capital as defined by the amount of specific skills a firm generates through work based training wbt activities by merging three rich firm level datasets we estimate the impact of a set of variables that are supposed to affect both the propensity to invest in wbt and the intensity of training within the italian manufacturing industry over the period 2001 2005 the estimates show that the effects of innovation on wbt is higher when the introduction of new technologies is supported by organizational innovations when looking at the nature of wbt we investigate the different determinants of the firms propensity to provide both in house and outside training finally we estimate training intensity in terms respectively of the number of training activities provided private and total training costs and the share of trainees

neoclassical political economy an application to trade policies abstract this paper starts with a review of the literature on neoclassical political economy and then goes on to apply this perspective to the issue of trade liberalization in this connection the paper critically discusses various political economy models which have been advanced to explain patterns of trade policies in both developed and developing countries and assesses them in light of recent empirical evidence the paper also makes a brief review of the empirical planning studies which estimate the gains from trade liberalization

asset profiles for technological innovation abstract this paper proposes a conceptual distinction between four generic categories of assets for technological innovation 1 scientific research assets 2 process innovative assets 3 product innovative application assets and 4 aesthetic design assets technological innovation may sometimes require the activation of only one asset type but more often a specific constellation of more asset types has to be mobilized the asset categories differ profoundly with respect not only to their respective competence bases but also with respect to their functional contribution to industrial innovation and mostly also to their organizational attachment this way of conceiving technological innovation is opposed to the one dimensional r d conception that tends to view r d as one functional asset along with others like manufacturing or marketing it is argued that the different innovative assets are often located in different organizational settings within the corporation the coupling between assets is discussed in terms of inter asset specificity we illustrate the great variation of innovative asset profiles across a wide spectrum of product categories the concept of technological trajectories is reinterpreted in terms of asset profile oscillations and regroupings finally the framework is related to recent efforts to formulate a resource based theory of the firm and the implications for innovation strategy is discussed

does location matter for firms r d behaviour empirical evidence for danish firms in this paper we analyse whether regional location matters for danish firms r d performance in accordance with kleinknecht and poot s 1992 survey we test the urban hierarchy hypothesis stating that firms in urban agglomerations are more likely to perform r d than firms elsewhere using a micro dataset for danish firms obtained by merging danish r d statistics with account data the evidence of the influence of location on both the probability for undertaking r d and r d intensity is mixed but basically not in favour of any urban hierarchy in danish r d other non regional factors such as size of firm sectoral dummies classified according to pavitt s taxonomy and the dummy controlling for ict service industries are also estimated to have significant influence on firms r d behaviour furthermore the age of a firm only affects its r d intensity significantly cet article cherche a analyser si oui ou non la localisation regionale est importante pour le comportement des entreprises danoises quant

analyzing literature based innovation output indicators the italian experience abstract this paper presents the results of a study on the product innovations introduced in the italian market in 1989 and reported in a selected number of trade journals the analysis of data collected by means of this literature based counting procedure confirms that r d oriented industries and large firms do not in italy have a marked competitive advantage in innovation the country appears to be instead characterized by a significant presence of consumer goods industries and small firms in innovation our data indicate a statistically significant association between trade competitiveness and strength in product innovation and show the comparatively higher capacity for product innovation of some of the industries in which italy achieves a positive performance in international trade moreover the presence of spillovers at the regional level from both private and public r d expenditures proves to be positively correlated with the development of product innovations finally small firms with fewer than 50 employees appear to be more innovative than is usually believed to be the case

the role of knowledge in r d efficiency past research has recognized that both demand and capability influence the allocation of r d resources scholars have had an easier time getting a grip on demand than on capability while it has been recognized that knowledge is an important part of capability to date formalization of knowledge and its role in r d activity has been unsatisfactory this paper models the role of knowledge in r d various sources of such knowledge are considered the model throws a different light on analyses that employ a knowledge capital stock and also illuminates the dual private and public nature of technological knowledge

technological cooperative agreements and firm s r d intensity a note on causality relations abstract in this paper we apply a recently proposed model of vector autoregression for panel data to analyse the granger causality relationship between a firm s intramural r d intensity and technological cooperative agreements the analysis relies on a sample composed of 95 major us european and japanese firms in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries observed during the period 1980 1986 decisions on interfirm technological collaborations are shown to cause a la granger decisions on internal r d investments and vice versa we thus suggest that in contrast with the methodological approaches followed by previous empirical works firms decisions concerning both intramural innovative effort and technological cooperation are endogenous and have to be jointly studied through a simultaneous two equation structural model

crossing the innovation threshold through mergers and acquisitions firms are resorting more and more to mergers and acquisitions m a to bridge the gap between where they are and where they would like to be in relation to innovation and performance this paper investigates whether involvement in m a triggers distinct patterns of innovative behaviour across firms and whether this effect is conditional on firm size the analysis combines data from four waves of the community innovation survey cis and the business register of dutch manufacturing firms we observe that m as influence the probability that firms will begin innovation activities or persist with them and these effects vary at different points in the firm size distribution in particular by using m a firms are able to persist with the innovation efforts and output over time and this effect is especially strong for large firms for small firms m a help them to cross the innovation threshold increasing the probability of the transition from a non innovator to an active innovator however the m a effect does not mitigate the tendency of small firms to be occasional innovators

investment cash flow sensitivities credit rationing and financing constraints in small and medium sized firms the controversy on whether investment cash flow sensitivity is a good indicator of financing constraints is still unsolved we apply a comprehensive approach by cross validating our analysis with both balance sheet and qualitative data on self declared credit rationing and financing constraints on a sample of mainly small and medium sized firms our qualitative information shows that self declared credit rationing is weakly related to both traditional a priori factors such as firm size age and location and lenders rational decisions taken on the basis of their credit risk models we use the qualitative information on firms which were denied additional credit to provide evidence relevant to the investment cash flow sensitivity debate the evidence shows that self declared credit rationing significantly discriminates between firms which possess or not such sensitivity while a priori criteria do not the same result does not apply when we consider the wider group of financially constrained firms which do not seem to have a higher investment cash flow sensitivity supporting the more recent empirical evidence in this direction

technical change growth and trade new departures in institutional economics this article analyses the main theoretical and policy issues emerging from the literature on the evolutionary institutional economics of technical change the four distinguishing characteristics of which are that technology is often proprietary in nature only a part of knowledge is codifiable in handbooks blueprints patents and so on there are fundamental variations in the above two points across different technological fields and the evolution of knowledge is highly path dependent