Search

Against the backdrop of the current political developments in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, such as Ukraine, Poland, and Romania, the question arises as to the role played by economic transformation and the resulting innovation linkages in these countries over the last 20 years. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of economic and institutional dimensions on the development of CEE countries, explicitly distinguishing between European Union (EU) members and non‐members, and thus reflecting the differences in institutions and path dependency. Furthermore, the paper contrasts the performance of CEE countries with that of Western European countries. To achieve these objectives, the impact of factors such as innovation, institutions, and political practices on the economic development of 37 European countries from 2000 until 2020 is followed using fixed effects regression and Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The results of the analysis show the importance of institutional factors such as low levels of corruption, political freedoms, and intellectual property. The effect of institutional variables was particularly pronounced in the case of non‐EU countries, which indicates the particular importance of the development of stable institutions for achieving higher levels of economic development for this category of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the notion of territorial patterns of innovation as a new conceptualization to understand the relationship among knowledge, innovation, and economic growth at the regional level. The territorial patterns of innovation approach reject the simplistic view of an invention-innovation equivalence and advance alternative patterns, alternative ways in which knowledge and innovation can take place and mix in space. Each of them represents a different way of innovating, one not necessarily more efficient than the other. On the empirical ground, the paper demonstrates this statement for all NUTS2 regions of the 27 European Union states by showing that the efficiency in taking advantage of innovation does not only link to the strength of the local knowledge base; rather, territorial patterns of innovation characterized by relatively low knowledge intensity can be relatively more efficient in grasping and exploiting innovation returns for growing. Interesting policy implications can be drawn from the empirical analysis presented. If the results do not deny the importance of research and development ( R&D) activities for regional growth, and therefore the right focus put forward by the Europe 2020 on a 'smart growth' based on knowledge and innovation, they call for particular attention when the Europe 2020 goal is translated into a regional setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today rapidly growing economies depend more on the creation, acquisition, distribution, and use of knowledge. As such, strategies for enhancing research and innovation capabilities have come to occupy a more important position in many developing nations, including China. Already the leading production center, and often seen as China's economic locomotive, Shanghai is striving aggressively to retain its national preeminence and has launched concerted efforts to increase local innovative output. The primary purpose of this paper is to understand how state-led efforts have fared in promoting technology innovation. By situating the city in the national and global context, the paper shows that Shanghai has gained a substantial lead in developing an innovation environment with extensive global linkages and leading research institutions. Recent efforts in building up the research and innovation capacity of the enterprise sector have begun to show progress. Although firms are enthusiastic about its future as an innovation center, Shanghai continues to face challenges of inadequate protection of intellectual property, lack of venture capital investment, and the tightening supply of highly qualified knowledge workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a formal model for the relationship between innovation and growth in European Union regions is developed drawing upon the theoretical contribution of the systems of innovation approach. The model combines the analytical approach of the regional growth models with the insights of the systemic approach. The cross-sectional analysis, covering all the Enlarged Europe (EU-25) regions (for which data are available), shows that regional innovative activities (for which a specific measure is developed) play a significant role in determining differential regional growth patterns. Furthermore, the model sheds light on how geographical accessibility and human capital accumulation, by shaping the regional system of innovation, interact (in a statistically significant way) with local innovative activities, thus allowing them to be more (or less) effectively translated into economic growth. The paper shows that an increase in innovative effort is not necessarily likely to produce the same effect in all EU-25 regions. Indeed, the empirical analysis suggests that in order to allow innovative efforts in peripheral regions to be as productive as in core areas, they need to be complemented by huge investments in human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent empirical evidence strongly supports) externality hypothesis that urban diversity provides a more favorable environment for economic development than urban specialization. In order to correctly gauge Jacobs's hypothesis, economic development should be understood as a result of innovations. Furthermore, a relevant diversity measure should take into account the degree of diversity of the inherent classes (e.g. pharmaceuticals are closer to chemicals than to forestry). These ideas are tested using regionally classified Swedish patent application data as a measure of innovativeness. Patent data are also used to reflect technological diversity. The results show that the number of patent applications in Swedish regions is highly and positively dependent on regional technological specialization, quite the opposite of Jacobs's prediction. This paper raises general questions about earlier empirical results. It is concluded that the size of regions is an important factor to consider, since this in itself may affect patenting intensity and technological diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper analyzes the productivity growth of the Spanish regions between 1965 and 1995, decomposing productivity gains into technological progress and efficiency change by means of Malmquist indices. Once estimates of efficiency are obtained, the aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of human and public capital on growth in terms of their impact on Total Factor Productivity (TFP). Public capital is believed to increase the productivity of the private factors of production whereas human capital is thought to contribute to the production process as an additional input and to have a dynamic influence on growth through its impact on technological innovation (shifts in the production frontier) and technological diffusion (movements toward the frontier), which are the components of this TFP measure. Considering inefficiencies will then allow the effects of these variables on TFP growth to be estimated via technological progress and efficiency gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to point out some shortcomings of traditional approaches to the study of ‘knowledge spillovers’ and to suggest an alternative based on how knowledge is actually created and exchanged by individuals. Which regional setting is the best incubator of technological change and economic growth? Is this promoted by regional diversity or specialization of economic activity? This study will include economic analyses of geographically localized ‘dynamic knowledge externalities, Jacob's externalities, or adding new work to old, industrial classification and technology combination, human creativity, and technology combination through human action and imaginative use of resources. Employees add to, or switch their product line; individuals move from one type of production to another; individuals observe a product/process in another setting and incorporate it; individuals possessing different skills and working for different firms collaborate; and urban diversity and resource collaboration are utilized. It is concluded that problems are solved through the combination of previously unrelated things and that promoting regional specialization at the expense of spontaneously evolved local diversity might be a counter-productive policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the need to develop a knowledge economy at the regional level is increasingly evident to policy makers in Europe, the right set of policies to accomplish such an aim has not yet been devised, and is an important policy debate also at the European Community level. This special issue is a step forward in this direction. The design and implementation of regional innovation policies should take the specificities of each regional mode of innovation into account, and these peculiarities can be highlighted only through sound scientific conceptual and empirical analyses in which the regional dimension is carefully taken into consideration and the spatial effects of policy tools like R&D investments and innovation incentives clearly assessed in terms of their impact on regional growth in different regional contexts. It is in this spirit that this special issue has been conceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia presents an interesting case of a country which has strived to implement innovation policies since the transition period but so far has achieved mixed results. This study aims to analyze the impact of knowledge production and knowledge spillovers on regional growth in Russia within a framework of endogenous growth models. Applying GMM and spatial error panel modeling techniques to Rosstat data for 80 Russian regions from 2005 to 2013, the authors test the hypothesis about the relevance of R&D and expenditure on technological innovations (H1) and the hypothesis about the relevance of knowledge spillovers (H2) on the growth rates of GRP per capita. Hypothesis 1 was confirmed while Hypothesis 2 was rejected, indicating the absorptive capacities of innovatively lagging regions were not high enough for effective adaptation of new technologies from technologically innovative regions. Inclusion of indicators related to additional channels of knowledge diffusion in regressions resulted in the relevance of FDI and imports of goods and services for regional growth. Results of the study could form the basis for developing innovation policies for the Russian regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]