r d investments under endogenous cluster formation abstract we provide an innovative theory based explanation for the positive relationship between firms r d intensity and their degree of r d cooperation we show that when oligopolistic firms decide on long term r d investment before forming research clusters among competitors investment incentives are increased by the desire to become a member of an attractive cluster this can result in over investment compared to the welfare optimum and compared to a scenario where research clusters are ex ante fixed thereby as a theoretical contribution we fully characterize the equilibria of the unanimity game on cluster formation with heterogeneous firms

competition cooperation and innovation organizational arrangements for regimes of rapid technological progress abstract discussions of the link between firm size and innovation are outmoded because the boundaries of the firm have become fuzzy in recent decades strategic alliances constellations of bilateral agreements among firms are increasingly necessary to support innovative activities such alliances can facilitate complex coordination beyond what the price system can accomplish while avoiding the dysfunctional properties sometimes associated with hierarchy antitrust law and competition policy need to recognize that these new organizational forms are often the functional antithesis of cartels though they may have certain structural similarities a more complete understanding of bilateral contracts and agreements ought to reveal when and how cooperation can support rather than impede innovation and competition

solvency constraint underdiversification and idiosyncratic risks contrary to the prediction of the standard portfolio diversification theory many investors place a large fraction of their stock investment in a small number of stocks i show that underdiversification may be caused by solvency requirements my model predicts that for quite general preferences and return distributions 1 underdiversification decreases in discretionary wealth and 2 expected return and covariance determine which stocks to invest in but variance higher moments and sharpe ratio do not matter for this choice in addition a less diversified stock portfolio has a higher expected return a higher volatility and a higher skewness and idiosyncratic risks are priced

financing investment in the european electricity transmission network consequences on long term sustainability of the tsos financial structure this article focuses on the ability of european tsos to meet the demand for substantial investments in the electricity transmission grid over the next two decades we employ quantitative analysis to assess the impact of the required capital expenditures under a set of alternative financing strategies we consider a best case scenario of full cooperation between the european tsos it appears that under current trends in the evolution of transmission tariffs only half the volumes of investment currently planned could be funded a highly significant increase in transmission tariffs will be required to ensure the whole scale investments can be delivered finally alternative strategies can dampen the impact on tariffs but they can only partially substitute for this increase in charges paid by network users

complementarity and external linkages the strategies of the large firms in biotechnology in biotechnology large firms enter into different kinds of linkages with universities and small medium sized research intensive firms we test the hypothesis that the strategies of external linkage of the large firms with other parties are complementary to one another we show that if any two strategies are complementary i e undertaking more of one strategy raises the marginal value of the other then they are positively correlated using data for a sample large us european and japanese chemical and pharmaceutical producers we find that the strategies above are positively correlated even after controlling for firm specific characteristics

exploration during turbulent times an analysis of the relation between cooperation in innovation activities and radical innovation performance during the economic crisis this article investigates the relation between cooperation in innovation activities and innovation before and during the last economic recession we find that cooperation in innovation activities has a stronger relation with radical innovation performance during the economic recession than before this being true irrespectively of whether the partners are national or international this benefit from cooperation during the economic turmoil is higher in the case of firms having different types of partners simultaneously we also find that past cooperation in innovation activities is positively associated to innovation performance during the crisis

cooperative agreements and the theory of the firm focusing on barriers to change abstract cooperative agreements between firms have become a significant phenomenon in the 1980s and have been analyzed by various approaches including economics organizational theory and business strategy this paper draws on these different strands of the literature to argue that cooperative agreements have led to focus the analysis of firms organization on the issue of change as a consequence cooperative agreements have contributed to recent developments of the theory of the firm in favor of competence based and evolutionary approaches the analysis is then extended to the case of multinational firms

concubinage or marriage informal and formal cooperations for innovation based on a sample of german inno innovating firms that contains information on formal and informal innovation cooperation between customers and suppliers we state that firms perceive informal cooperation as being more important than formal cooperation modes we then investigate the determinants of firms decisions to engage into the respective cooperation modes in line with previous empirical work we do not find much empirical evidence for the relevance of incoming spillovers in addition our results suggest that this finding holds as well for informal cooperations a firms ability to protect its proprietary innovations however seems to be a key determinant of formal as well as informal cooperations furthermore absorptive capacity and the organizational structure of in house r d play an important role another relevant driver of vertical cooperations are the innovation dynamics at the he industry level firms who operate an r d department and firms who are involved in costly r d projects tend to cooperate formally rather than informally

agreements between firms and the technological life cycle model evidence from information technologies abstract contrarily to most previous contributions which have addressed the issue of cooperative agreements essentially in a perspective of comparative statics in this paper a model is proposed that relies on the technological trajectory notion suggested by evolutionary theories and emphasizes the relevance of the technological and market dynamics in explaining why and to what extent firms have recourse to agreements in particular it is claimed that the propensity of firms towards collaborative ventures and the characteristics of the cooperation depend upon the phase of the technological life cycle of the industry branch in which the cooperation takes place based on a cross sectional analysis of 45 industry branches in the information technology industrial system the paper also provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the propensity towards agreements and the nature of the agreements concluded do change during the technological life cycle to this end it takes advantage of the arpa database developed at the polytechnic of milan and containing detailed information on over 2 000 agreements concluded in the 1980 1986 period all over the world in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries

the participation of new technology based firms in eu funded r d partnerships the role of venture capital this paper investigates the participation of new technology based firms ntbfs in eu funded r d partnerships we examine whether venture capital vc backed firms are more likely to enter these partnerships than their non vc backed peers and the role of the ownership and governance of the vc investor we resort to a mixed method approach we use qualitative information collected through interviews with managers of ntbfs and vc firms to better illustrate our deductively derived theoretical hypotheses that are then tested through a large scale econometric analysis the econometric analysis takes advantage of the vico dataset which includes longitudinal data on 8346 ntbfs from seven european countries observed from 1995 to 2008 out of which 758 were vc backed the econometric results show that vc backing has a strong positive impact on ntbfs participation in eu funded r d partnerships but the magnitude of this effect rapidly decreases with ntbfs prior experience of this type of partnership moreover the magnitude of the impact of vc backing considerably differs depending on the type of investor with bank and government vc exhibiting the strongest positive effects

evolutionary diffusion internal and external methods used to acquire encompassing complementary and incremental technological changes in the lithotripsy industry this study links theories concerning methods that firms use to acquire technology with theories concerning types of technological change we place particular emphasis on interorganizational relationships we predict that firms will often acquire know how needed for encompassing technological change through equity based arrangements with other organizations complementary technological changes through nonequity interorganizational arrangements and incremental changes through internal r d our theory draws on perspectives that emphasize the need to develop new competencies within a business organization and to protect the value of existing competencies our empirical analysis examines methods of technology acquisition that firms have used in the commercialization of medical lithotripters which are devices that fragment stones in the kidney and gall bladder the analysis contributes to a better understanding of how technology acquisition methods vary with the manner in which technological change relates to a firm s existing capabilities the study also helps develop our understanding of the evolutionary processes by which capabilities diffuse through an industry 1998 john wiley sons ltd

dynamic efficiency of steady state equilibria in an overlapping generations model with productive capital abstract this paper establishes sufficient technological conditions under which for any feasible set of well behaved preferences stationary over investment relative to the golden rule is ruled out and the economy s steady state equilibria are therefore dynamically efficient

res diffusion and r d investments in the flexibilisation of the european electricity networks abstract the present analysis adds up to the discussion carried around the flexibilisation of the electricity networks as means of higher diffusion of renewable energy sources res inspiring from innovation studies the paper proposes an economic rationale for considering res technology manufacturers as investors in electricity networks moreover the present analysis scrutinize the extent to which the various economic operators within specific segments of the power supply chain invest in a portfolio of research and development activities among which the electricity grids and storage technologies the intensity of these research investments was mapped across the european countries for the year of 2011 their geographic distribution confirms the rationale of an analysis based on canonical correlation testing the associations between res market diffusion and power network indicators the analysis provides useful insights for specific technology such as the one revealing pv market sensitivity to research investments in storage technologies confirming a potential business model coupling the two technologies accommodating this pattern and enabling further diversification of research portfolios the public incentives could be redesigned in order to address the flexibilisation of power networks

r d cooperation and failures in innovation projects empirical evidence from french cis data the second french community innovation survey cis indicates that 14 of rd collaborating firms had to abandon or delay their innovation projects due to difficulties in their partnerships an outcome which we term cooperation failures controlling for sample selection on the cooperation decision our estimates show that firms collaborating with competitors and public research organizations pros especially when they are foreign are more likely to delay or stop an innovation project because of difficulties encountered in their rd partnerships more surprisingly firms collaborating with their suppliers also face a higher risk of cooperation failures at least for pros firms can reduce the risk of cooperation failures through previous experiences in partnerships larger firms and group subsidiaries are less likely to face cooperation failures and so do firms in industries with a strong appropriability regime

on dynamic real trade models abstract this paper examines the steady state implications of differences in tax policies in an overlapping generations two country two good dynamic model of international trade it is also shown that in the overlapping generations framework production diversity along with factor price equalization obtains in the long run

balancing demand pull and supply push measures to support renewable electricity in europe abstract increasing the share of renewable energy is deemed essential to reduce the carbon intensity of the current electricity mix the promotion of renewable energy technologies should thus be as effective and efficient as possible therefore support schemes should explicitly consider the balance between demand pull e g production subsidies and supply push efforts public rdd the cumulative pull push ratio for biogas is about 700 in the 5 year lag case and about 1200 in the other cases 10 yr lag or more although the debate on optimal rd d efforts is not conclusive and very sector specific it is relevant to compare our findings to average pull push ratios of about 20 in the engineering sector overall we can safely conclude that european governments should critically evaluate current renewables subsidy schemes and increase public rd d investments to support next waves of renewable energy technologies

bottom up estimation of industrial and public r d investment by technology in support of policy making the case of selected low carbon energy technologies abstract this paper discusses a bottom up approach to estimate the level of r d investment by technology in areas where data are scarce it develops a four step methodology for the estimation of corporate r d investments at technology level this approach can overcome gaps in existing data by combining publicly available information in a novel way even though it introduces some uncertainty this is illustrated for a set of low carbon energy technologies that were identified as key for meeting europe s long term energy and climate objectives by the european strategic energy technology plan the paper finds that the aggregated r d investments dedicated to these technologies amounted to 3 3 billion in the eu in 2007 including public funding from european union member states and at eu level and industrial research activities from companies with headquarters registered in the eu the results allow conclusions on the european energy research policy to be drawn such as the dominance of industrial funds and have provided significant input to the european policy making in this field the paper ends with suggestions on how to further enhance the accuracy of the approach and how to widen its application to other sectors

r d cooperation in smes the direct effect and the moderating role of human capital abstractwe analyse the determinants of r d cooperation for smes in italy we introduce in the literature human capital as one of the main determinants of r d cooperation concentrating on its moder

determinants of investment under incentive regulation the case of the norwegian electricity distribution networks investment in electricity networks as regulated natural monopolies is among the highest regulatory and energy policy priorities the electricity sector regulators adopt different incentive mechanisms to ensure that the firms undertake sufficient investment to maintain and modernise the grid thus an effective regulatory treatment of investment requires understanding the response of companies to the regulatory incentives this study analyses the determinants of investment in electricity distribution networks using a panel dataset of 129 norwegian companies observed from 2004 to 2010 a bayesian model averaging approach is used to provide a robust statistical inference by taking into account the uncertainties around model selection and estimation the results show that three factors drive nearly all network investments investment rate in previous period socio economic costs of energy not supplied and finally useful life of assets the results indicate that norwegian companies have to some degree responded to the investment incentives provided by the regulatory framework however some of the incentives do not appear to be effective in driving the investments

the innovation performance of irish and foreign owned firms the roles of r d and networking this paper contributes to the growing evidence that irish and foreign owned firms based in ireland conduct their innovation activities differently from each other it tests the cohen and levinthal hypothesis separately for irish and foreign owned firms that undertaking r d and collaborating with external networks together enhance the probability of product and process innovation to control for potential endogeneity of the external networking variables a two step procedure is used with predicted probabilities used as instruments in the estimated production functions based on data from the irish community innovation survey 2006 to 2008 the results suggest that irish owned firms which engage in external networks with public knowledge sources while simultaneously undertaking r d are more likely to innovate than firms which perform these two activities individually irish owned firms which engage in backward networking for product and forward networking for process innovation while also undertaking r d are less likely to be innovative perhaps suggesting a substitution effect these results for irish owned firms provide some support for cohen and levinthal s hypothesis however foreign owned firms seem to behave differently being largely self contained and relying exclusively on intramural r d for innovation as the external networking variables both individually and when interacted with r d have no effect on innovation likelihood

technological capabilities and patterns of innovative cooperation of firms in the uk regions iammarino s piva m vivarelli m and von tunzelmann n technological capabilities and patterns of innovative cooperation of firms in the uk regions regional studies this paper focuses on the relationship between firms technological capabilities and different forms of cooperation for innovation paying specific attention to the role of regional location of the firm the findings based on the fourth uk community innovation survey cis4 show that cooperation within business groups vertical cooperation with customers and suppliers and horizontal cooperation with universities turn out to be significantly associated with firms technological capabilities however it is found that the analysis for the uk as a whole masks stark regional differences in terms of the relationship between local and non local collaborative linkages and firms technological capabilities and competences iammarino s piva m vivarelli m and von tunzelmann n

dynamic incentives of environmental regulations the effects of alternative policy instruments on technology diffusion abstract we develop a framework for comparing empirically the effects of alternative environmental policy instruments on the diffusion of new technology market based and command and control approaches can he quantitatively compared by estimating the economic penalty that firms through their actions reveal to be associated with violation of standards in the context of concerns about global climate change we empirically examine the likely effects of pigouvian taxes technology adoption subsidies and technology standards we employ state level data on the diffusion of thermal insulation in new home construction comparing the effects of energy prices insulation cost and building codes

incumbents use of pre entry alliances before expansion into new technical subfields of an industry industry incumbents frequently delay entry into emerging technical subfields fearing product cannibalization and uncertain investment and enter only after technical and market uncertainties have subsided we predict that many incumbents particularly stronger firms will participate in alliances with other firms before their standalone entry the alliances will be used to realize part of the value of specialized assets and to gain information about the emerging products and markets we support the predictions with evidence from the us market of the medical diagnostic imaging industry

an analysis of cooperative research and development i analyze the effects of cooperative research whereby member firms agree to share the costs andfruits of a research project before they undertake it in this model industrywide agreements tend to have socially beneficial effects when the degree ofproduct market competition is low when there are r d spillovers in the absence of cooperation when a high degree of sharing is technologically feasible and when the agreement concerns basic research rather than development activities i show that a royalty free cross licensing agreement among any number offirms lowers the equilibrium level of innovation even though it increases the efficiency of r d through sharing

taxing capital in a large open economy abstract this paper analyzes capital taxation in a dynamic optimizing equilibrium model of a large open economy it is shown that the existence of current account imbalances may yield surprising results for example if a country has a current account deficit the tendency of an increased tax on investment to lower wages is dampened if the deficit is sufficiently large an increased investment tax may actually increase both wages and welfare in the long run a country with a current account surplus may find that temporary investment incentives improve its current account in all but the short run

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

indicators of energy security in industrialised countries energy security has become a popular catch phrase both in the scientific arena as well as in the political discussion yet in general the applied concepts of energy security are rather vague this paper sheds some light on concepts and indicators of energy security first we conceptually discuss the issue of energy supply security and explain why it is not to handle by one science alone and what economics may contribute in order to structure the topic after providing a brief survey of existing attempts to define or measure energy security we suggest an additional dimension along which indicators of energy security may be classified ex post and ex ante indicators finally we illustrate our concept on the basis of several simplified indicators while ex post indicators are mostly based on price developments ex ante indicators are to a greater extent aimed at illustrating potential problems our illustration suggests that it is worthwhile to take into account the market structure along with the political stability of exporting countries

what drives the formation of valuable university industry linkages insights from the wine industry abstract most of the literature on university industry u i linkages assumes that these linkages are beneficial per se we question this assumption suggesting that not all such linkages are equally helpful in this paper we explore the factors driving the formation of valuable u i linkages conceived as those linkages between universities and firms that have a higher potential to diffuse knowledge to other firms in their regional economy our empirical strategy combines case study methodology with econometric techniques using data from two wine clusters in chile and in italy the firm s knowledge base is found to be a key driver of valuable u i linkages we conclude that selectivity should be encouraged among policy makers endeavouring to promote u i linkages

technological internationalisation in the electro technical industry a cross company comparison of patenting patterns 1986 2000 abstract this paper addresses the issue of r d internationalisation of two multinationals in the electro technical industry ge and abb by means of a patent data analysis the overwhelming majority of both companies r d activities are concentrated in western europe and north america the locational overlap between the two firms activities is small these results are consistent with findings from earlier studies that 1 there is little evidence to suggest that the production of technology is globalised in a general sense and 2 that tapping knowledge from an industry s global lead location plays a very limited role in foreign r d investments

investment firm value and risk for a system operator balancing energy grids abstract with the liberalization of energy markets integrated energy companies have separated into entities that specialize in production and or transmission of energy transmission of energy requires balancing the grid to guarantee system security which is performed by the independent system operator so when the so faces stochastic demand grid balancing has sizeable consequences on current and future profits and hence on firm value and firm risk we explore these value and risk consequences with and without an investment option to expand transmission capacity we show that firm value consists of the value of the transmission capacity in place plus the value of a short put and a short call option that are the result of the so s balancing actions firm risk without investment option is non linear and determined by the short option positions it is decreasing with increasing energy demand the existence of an option to expand transmission capacity increases firm value and firm risk

sensitivity analysis for mean variance portfolio problems this paper shows how to perform sensitivity analysis for mean variance mv portfolio problems using a general form of parametric quadratic programming the analysis allows an investor to examine how parametric changes in either the means or the right hand side of the constraints affect the composition mean and variance of the optimal portfolio the optimal portfolio and associated multipliers are piecewise linear functions of the changes in either the means or the right hand side of the constraints the parametric parts of the solution show the rates of substitution of securities in the optimal portfolio while the parametric parts of the multipliers show the rates at which constraints are either tightening or loosening furthermore the parametric parts of the solution and multipliers change in different intervals when constraints become active or inactive the optimal mv paths for sensitivity analyses are piecewise parabolic as in traditional mv analysis however the optimal paths may contain negatively sloping segments and are characterized by types of kinks i e points of nondifferentiability not found in mv analysis

technological diversity uncertainty and innovation performance abstractwe analyse the impact of technological diversity on innovation performance in the discovery stage measured by r d intensity and patent applications and in the commercialization stage mea

does the development of environmental innovation require different resources evidence from spanish manufacturing firms in recent years environmental innovations are getting increasingly at the center both of the scientific debate and of the policy maker agenda adopting the resource based view this paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the specific role of internal external and hybrid resources in the environmental innovation development using a dataset of 4829 spanish manufacturing firms and estimating probit models it is found that internal resources have greater importance for environmental innovations moreover green innovators seem to be characterized by more intensive external relationships for hybrid resources acquisition of equipment but not of patents is more relevant finally evidence suggest the relevance of complementing the analysis of the external factors triggering environmental innovations with those of the internal resources the firm has access to in order to fully understand and support the development of environmental innovations

short interest explanations and tests cross sectional and time series tests are performed to explain levels and changes in short interest explanatory variables and tests are chosen based on tax arbitrage and speculative reasons for going short short interest is found to follow a seasonal pattern that is weakly consistent with tax based trading stocks with high betas and the existence of convertible securities or options tend to have higher levels of short interest which is con sistent with arbitrage efforts for firms with traded options there is a positive association between the month to month changes in option open interest and short interest prior months returns and changes in short interest are positively related but there is no rela tionship between changes in short interest and returns in the subsequent month

the diversity of r d consortia and firm behavior evidence from japanese data an empirical analysis of japanese government sponsored r d consortia involving 213 firms over 13 years shows that the diversity of a consortium is associated with greater r d expenditure by participating firms diversity is alternatively measured by the montgomery 1982 index based on 3 digit sic codes and branstetter and sakakibara s 1998 modification of the jaffe 1986 patent portfolio based index

indicators for energy security the concept of energy security is widely used yet there is no consensus on its precise interpretation in this research we have provided an overview of available indicators for long term security of supply sos we distinguished four dimensions of energy security that relate to the availability accessibility affordability and acceptability of energy and classified indicators for energy security according to this taxonomy there is no one ideal indicator as the notion of energy security is highly context dependent rather applying multiple indicators leads to a broader understanding incorporating these indicators in model based scenario analysis showed accelerated depletion of currently known fossil resources due to increasing global demand coupled with increasing spatial discrepancy between consumption and production international trade in energy carriers is projected to have increased by 142 in 2050 compared to 2008 oil production is projected to become increasingly concentrated in a few countries up to 2030 after which production from other regions diversifies the market under stringent climate policies this diversification may not occur due to reduced demand for oil possible benefits of climate policy include increased fuel diversity and slower depletion of fossil resources

co operative r d why and with whom an integrated framework of analysis abstract firms use r d partnerships to access knowledge and build global r d networks this article develops an integrated framework to examine the determinants of the choice of partners with which firms co operate on r d this resource based perspective underscores the interactions between three major questions why co operate who does and with whom it argues in particular that the choice of partners is dictated by the complementary resources which the latter command the framework is then expanded to predict the relative efficiency of r d co operation with different partners including suppliers clients rivals academic institutions and foreign firms the empirical analysis which is based on responses to france s version of the second european community innovation survey cis 2 strongly supports the overall framework of analysis

an international review of the implications of regulatory and electricity market structures on the emergence of grid scale electricity storage abstract energy storage systems ess have the potential to make a significant contribution to planning and operation practises in power systems while ess can be used to provide multiple benefits in the power sector widespread use has been restricted by high technology costs lack of deployment experience and the barriers and uncertainties caused by the present electricity market and regulatory structures that were designed for conventional electricity systems this paper reviews countries with high renewable targets and with significant current or planned ess deployments to ascertain the common problems affecting the use of ess on the grid and to establish where changes have been made or proposed to the electricity market and regulatory frameworks three major problems were identified as the undetermined asset class for ess and unbundled electricity system limiting stakeholders from determining and realising multiple ess benefits low electricity market liquidity and changing market conditions and a lack of common standards and procedures for evaluating connecting operating and maintaining ess based on the established barriers recommendations to update or create policies regulation and market arrangements to increase the viability and wider use of grid level ess are discussed the three key regulatory and policy recommendations were identified as an alignment of renewable policies to that of ess creating a separate asset class for ess and associated rules for regulated and competitive operations and standardising assessment frameworks connection and operational procedures for the use of ess finally three main electricity market recommendations include updating rules to support simultaneous ess operation across wholesale ancillary services and capacity markets updating market rules to allow compensation for flexible and highly accurate responsive demand and generation technologies such as ess and updating market ancillary services energy requirements

a dynamic specific factors model of international trade in a dynamic economy land and capital serve not only as factors of production but as assets which individuals use to transfer income from working periods to retirement changes in the terms of trade and in the endowments of fixed factors do not necessarily have the same effects on factor prices and on the composition of output as they do in a static framework changes in these variables affect both total savings and the amount of savings that is diverted toward investment in capital results derived from the traditional specific factors model are more likely to emerge when the sector using land as a factor of production has a higher labor share than the sector using capital in this case the land using sector dominates factor markets more than asset markets once the roles for land and capital as assets are recognized the possibility of natural resource booms that reduce steady state welfare arises at the same time an increase in population can raise steady state welfare

firms motivations for cooperative r d an empirical analysis of spanish firms abstract the aim of this paper is to analyze the motives that have caused industrial firms to cooperate in r d there are many theoretical works devoted to the theme but few empirical studies have been carried out with large samples to analyze the factors which determine why firms cooperate in r d we first review the reasons offered by the literature to explain technological cooperation with this allowing us to determine the conceptual framework and to propose some hypotheses we test these hypotheses with a sample of 1652 spanish firms that have carried out r d activities the results obtained suggest that firms motivations for cooperative r d are the complexity of technology and the fact that innovation is costly and uncertain we find that in order to undertake cooperative r d it is necessary to have certain internal capacities in this area with our results being supported by the theory of absorptive capacity however and by contrast with the results presented in other works questions related to market access and search for opportunities do not appear to exert an influence over cooperative r d besides the large sized firms resort more to cooperation and the reasons for cooperative r d differ as between large and small sized firms

offshoring of r d looking abroad to improve innovation performance the offshoring of knowledge services has become a phenomenon of increasing importance for firms but many of its implications are yet to be discussed thoroughly this paper analyzes whether r d offshoring contributes to enhancing firms innovation capabilities specifically the study distinguishes between two governance models of offshoring captive offshoring and offshore outsourcing and two types of innovation outcomes product and process innovations we suggest that r d offshoring has different impacts depending on the innovation results and governance models considered the study empirically tests these relationships using the spanish technological innovation panel this survey contains information on a large sample of firms from diverse sectors for the period 2004 2007 the empirical findings allow us confirm our hypotheses and highlight the strategic importance of r d offshoring the empirical evidence reveals a positive relation between offshoring and innovation performance with a greater effect on product than on process innovations the results for different governance models show that captive offshoring has a greater effect on innovation outcomes than offshore outsourcing these findings lead us to conclude that firms that look overseas can benefit from location specific and specialization advantages to improve innovation performance

death of the lethargic effects of expansion into new technical subfields on performance in a firm s base business this paper finds that industry incumbents that do not expand into new technical subfields tend to fare poorly in their established businesses even if the market for the established products continues to exist firms that expand from their established businesses survive longer and achieve greater subsequent market share than competitors that do not expand by some measures however a failed attempt to expand into a new subfield may be even more harmful to a base business than nonexpansion the study employs conventional and accelerated event time regression models to analyze market share and survival the sample which includes 371 incumbents in four base subfields of the medical diagnostic imaging industry between 1953 and 1989 examines performance following the emergence of five new technical subfields of the industry

energy subsidies structure of electricity prices and technological change of energy use abstract this paper addresses the impact of the structure of energy prices on technological change in renewable energy sources it operates on two fields of research that are often not related to each other firstly the increasing interest in environmental economics for the determinants of green technological change and secondly the impact of government policies aimed at subsidizing energy prices recent research claims a positive relationship between energy prices and the number of patents in the fields of energy efficiency this paper extends this research by investigating the impact of the price structure of electricity on patent counts in 1 renewable energy sources 2 wind energy and 3 solar power in nearly all oecd countries in the period 1990 2006 industrial energy users pay a lower price per energy unit than households due among others to government subsidy policies the empirical results show that reducing government subsidies and hence increasing the electricity price of large industrial electricity users relative to the price paid by small residential users provides a clear incentive to increase inventions as measured by number of patents in the technical fields of solar and wind energy these results are an important input in the debate on reducing government support to large energy users

what drives the choice of the type of partner in r d cooperation evidence for spanish manufactures and services abstractwe analyse the heterogeneity in firms decisions to engage in r d cooperation taking into account the type of partner competitors suppliers or customers and research institutions and the sector to which the firm belongs manufactures or services we use information from the technological innovation panel pitec for spanish firms and estimate multivariate probit models corrected for endogeneity which explicitly consider the interrelations between the different r d cooperation strategies we find that placing a higher importance to publicly available information incoming spillovers receiving public funding and firm size increase the probability of cooperation with all kind of partners but the role is much stronger in the case of cooperative agreements with research institutions and universities our results also suggest that r d intensity and the importance attributed to the lack of qualified personnel as a factor hampering innovation are key factors influencing positively r d cooperation

the analysis on photovoltaic electricity generation status potential and policies of the leading countries in solar energy abstract energy which is the main agenda of our world is crucially important for the people many countries frequently held meetings and discussions with energy agenda these countries are working to balance the energy demand and supply for finding the solution are researched researches should be attempted to present a more efficient way to use energy as well as renewable energy resources effectively photovoltaic energy power systems take place as the most dominant source among renewable energy technologies the most important reason is that it is unlimited and clean energy of the solar power systems many studies show that photovoltaic power systems will have an important share in the electricity of the future in this study to generate electricity from solar energy using photovoltaic systems have a leading position in some european countries united states of america china and japan s current status and future policies will be analyzed in various comments were made

internal r d expenditures and external technology sourcing abstract the paper examines the two way relationship between external r d activities and internal r d expenditures on a cross section of flemish r d active companies the analysis extends the classical explanatory variables like size diversification ownership structure and technological opportunities to include the impact of various external sourcing strategies r d cooperation and to a lesser extent r d contracted out are found to have a significant positive effect on internal r d but only if the companies have absorptive capacity in the form of a full time staffed r d department at the same time firms are found to be more frequently engaged in r d cooperation the more they spend on internal r d

the role of diversification profiles and dyadic characteristics in the formation of technological alliances differences between exploitation and exploration in a low tech industry this paper posits that corporate and technological diversification of firms and their relatedness in terms of products and technologies will impact their propensity to form technological alliances it argues that both higher levels of diversification and greater relatedness signal superior capabilities and available resources to prospective partners that will facilitate exploration and exploitation of technological assets in an alliance these theoretical conjectures are tested using a dataset of all tire producers worldwide between 1985 and 1996 that combines detailed firm data on establishment patenting and alliance activities the results indicate that complementarity in terms of corporate and technological diversification strategies as well as partner characteristics e g size age and technological capabilities drive exploitation alliances moreover firms with similar product portfolios are more likely to engage in exploitative interactions in contrast exploration alliances exhibit strong partner similarity across all firm characteristics both corporate and technological diversification have positive effects on firms propensity to engage in exploration while technological distance has a negative nonlinear one

life cycle saving and comparative advantage in the long run abstract this paper reformulates findlay s 1970 analysis by solving for life cycle saving explicitly the key parameters are the rate of population growth and the consumer s discount factor it is shown that findlay s result carries over even after the effect of population growth on the saving rate is taken into account

terms of trade factor intensities and the current account in a life cycle model this paper examines the effects of terms of trade changes on the external adjustment of a small open economy where each consumer has a life cycle saving function the supply side of the economy is given by the standard two sector model with two primary factors labour and capital it is shown that when both commodities are produced a terms of trade deterioration leads to a current account deficit surplus if the export import sector is more labour intensive

short sales restrictions and kinks on the mean variance frontier with a short sales restriction there may be switching points along the mean variance frontier corresponding to changes in the set of assets held traditional wisdom holds that each switching point corresponds to a kink while ross has claimed that kinks never occur this paper shows that the truth lies between the two views since the efficient frontier may or may not be kinked at a switching point there is some indication that kinks are rare since a kink corresponds to a portfolio in which all assets have the same expected return

internationalization of corporate technology through strategic partnering an empirical investigation this paper explores some trends in the internationalization of corporate r d efforts innovation output and strategic technology partnering in the past decade inter firm strategic technology partnering through which companies share their innovation efforts supplements the standard indicators of technological competence to broaden the scope from internal innovation processes to a wider range of innovative activities the international information technology industry is singled out for empirical study the main conclusion of this contribution is that even in a global industry such as information technology internationalization of innovation although by no means insignificant appears less important than expected