Search

We test whether there is a link between the performance of universities, measured through a concept of efficiency, and the economic development of the regions in which they operate. Indicators of teaching, research, and third mission are considered as outputs. To handle endogeneity problems between the efficiency of universities and economic development, a system generalized method of moments and then an instrumental variable approach are used. Our findings reveal that the presence of efficient universities fosters local economic development. Knowledge spillovers occur to areas that are in close geographical proximity to efficient universities. Results are robust to different estimation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the effect of worker inflows on establishments' productivity, using German data. Previous studies for other countries have found positive effects of hiring workers from superior (more productive or higher paying) firms. Ranking establishments by their median wage, we find that inflows from inferior establishments seem to increase hiring establishments' productivity. Further empirical analyses suggest our findings are due to a positive selection of such inflows from their sending establishments. These workers might have to find a better job match in order to advance their careers, an interpretation supported by the finding that the effect is driven by workers with short tenure at their previous employer. Our findings reflect the increasingly assortative pattern of worker mobility in Germany found in a related strand of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Estimate the effects of industrial localization on the spatial persistence of employment. • Software publishing industry is an ideal setting to study knowledge spillovers and labor pooling. • Employment at the facility level exhibits very small persistence. • Employment within the locations of these facilities situated are very persistent. • The evidence is more consistent with labor pooling than with spillovers as the source of agglomeration. We estimate the effects of industrial localization on the spatial persistence of employment in the software industry, using establishment data from Texas for the 2000–2006 period. Locations with an initial concentration of software employment retain an excess number of employees, beyond that expected from job turnover and job persistence at the establishment level. This is not driven by differential establishment growth or survival, but it is due to (a) the retention by establishments in a location of jobs lost by other establishments in that location, and (b) the propensity of software establishments to enter in locations with prior software establishment presence. These findings are more consistent with labor channel effects than with disembodied knowledge spillovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• I examine the distributional dynamics of establishment total factor productivity growth within India's manufacturing sector from 2001–2015. • I estimate separate rates of conditional convergence to the foreign and domestically owned components of the within industry productivity frontier. • I find positive overall convergence, but convergence to the foreign owned component of the within industry frontier is substantially dampened. • These findings imply significant differences in the nature of technology transfer from highly productive domestic and foreign firms. Inward foreign direct investment (FDI) has the potential to be an important conduit for technology transfer to developing countries. However, a large body of empirical research has found that the realized benefit to domestic productivity is minimal. This apparent absence of productivity spillovers from FDI is particularly surprising in light of recent evidence that firms in developing countries exhibit positive productivity convergence, or catch-up, to their industry's productivity frontier. In this paper, I use establishment level panel data from 21 distinct industries within India's manufacturing sector from 2001–2015 to provide new evidence on this issue. I analyze establishment total factor productivity conditional convergence and examine if the presence of foreign owned establishments within each industry's productivity frontier impacts this relationship. While I find statistically and quantitatively significant conditional convergence to the overall frontier, I show that convergence to the foreign owned component of the frontier is markedly slower. I corroborate this finding by exploring the impact of foreign ownership in the frontier on the dynamics of the within industry productivity distribution. This robust result suggests differences in the nature of technology transfer from highly productive domestic and foreign firms. I argue that my general econometric approach helps to reconcile the previously disconnected findings of negligible spillovers from FDI in developing countries with evidence of positive productivity convergence and the substantial presence of foreign firms in the productivity frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agglomeration is an important correlate to regional innovation. Large population centers pool knowledge workers and facilitate spillovers essential to innovative activity. And large populations provide more cost-effective locations for non-labor inputs to innovation, including local infrastructure that may facilitate innovative activity. However, university locations may also agglomerate these innovative inputs, even absent the agglomerative effects of large populations. Regional policymakers may find it useful to differentiate between various correlates to innovation. This paper exploits the collinearity of universities and population with regional human capital to apportion the relationship between these regional correlates of innovation into human-capital related and non-human-capital related channels. We identify a correlation between universities and regional innovation that reects a relationship between innovation and regional human capital correlated with university presence. None of this relationship can be apportioned to factors correlated with university presence and uncorrelated with local human capital. A key methodological contribution of this paper is the analytical framework, which can be extended to a larger number of aggregate factors and causal channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economic History Research / Investigaciones de Historia Económica is the property of Asociacion Espanola de Historia Economica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

‘Job hopping’ by engineers and scientists is widely heralded as an important channel for knowledge spillovers within industries. Far less is known, however, about the actions firms take to reduce the outward flow of knowledge through markets for skilled labor. This study investigates the efficacy of a lever that has received little research attention: corporate reputations for toughness in patent enforcement. Drawing on unique data on enforcement activity, intra-industry inventor mobility, and patent citations in the U.S. semiconductor industry, we find that a firm's litigiousness significantly reduces spillovers otherwise anticipated from departures of employee inventors, particularly when the hiring organizations are entrepreneurial ventures. Surprisingly, the deterrent effects of patent enforcement are similar in magnitude for firms located in California, a state characterized by open norms for knowledge trading, and firms headquartered in other U.S. states. The study sheds new light on the strategic actions firms use to prevent rivals from capturing value from their investments in human capital and research and development. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research demonstrates that firms, motivated by national differences in technical activity, expand abroad to source unique knowledge. Extant research suggests that firms use a knowledge sourcing strategy to ‘catch up’ with competitors and to obtain ‘technical diversity.’ We widen the investigation by suggesting that firms also use knowledge sourcing as a springboard to reduce their next generation R&D costs–that firms would seek out similar R&D activity to combine with their own. Using unique data that encompasses the multitude of countries where U.S. firms invest, we test the importance of these explanations. Measuring knowledge via patent stocks, we find that country-industries with larger stocks and greater technical similarity to the United States are more attractive. These findings suggest that an important explanation for firms investing abroad is not catching up or technologically diversifying, but is using similar R&D efforts of others to overcome fixed R&D cost hurdles. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 2006 study by M.G.H. Wu titled "An Economic Analysis of Audit and Nonaudit Services: The Trade-off between Competition Crossovers and Knowledge Spillovers," published in "Contemporary Accounting Research." Wu uses the Cournot duopoly game in quantities to analyze strategic relationships between auditing- and nonauditing-service markets (NAS), especially the economic link of knowledge spillovers and competition crossovers. Wu's argument for economies of scope involves two types of market participants: joint producers and single-market producers. The article presents an overview of the propositions, the empirical implications, and concerns for future research.

In this paper, I present a model in which both markets for audit services and nonaudit services (NAS) are oligopolistic. Accounting firms providing both audit services and NAS will employ oligopolistic competition in each of these markets. In addition to auditors' gaining "knowledge spillovers" from auditing to consulting or vice versa, oligopolistic competition in one market will influence the counterpart in the other market--what I call "competition crossovers". Although scope economies due to knowledge spillovers (for example, cost savings) are always beneficial to auditors, such benefits can entice accounting firms to adopt strategies (for example, price reductions) to compete aggressively in the audit market so that some, or all, firms become worse off. A trade-off arises between these two economic forces in the two oligopolistic markets. Given the trade-off between competition crossovers and knowledge spillovers, accounting firms may not reduce their audit prices, even though supplying NAS enables firms to decrease auditing costs--a nontrivial impact of oligopolistic competition in two markets on audit pricing. The empirical implication of my results is that because of competition-crossover effects between the auditing and consulting service markets, finding empirical evidence for knowledge-spillover benefits is likely to be difficult. Control variables for "audit-market concentration" concerned with competition-crossover effects and "auditor expertise" concerned with knowledge-spillover benefits should be included in audit-fee regressions to increase the power of empirical tests. With regard to policy implications, my analyses help explain the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on "market segmentation" and, hence, the profitability of accounting firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to establish if Marshallian and Jacobian knowledge spillovers affect job creation in the green energy sector. Whether these two effects exist is important for the number of jobs created in related fields and jobs pushed away in other sectors. In the analysis, the production efficiency, in terms of jobs and job spillovers, from inventions in solar, wind and energy efficiency, is explored through data envelopment analysis (DEA), based on the Malmquist productivity index, and tobit regression. A panel dataset of American and European firms over the period of 2002–2017 is used. The contribution to the literature is to show the role of the spillovers from the same technology sector (Marshallian externalities), and of the spillovers from more diversified activity (Jacobian externalities). Since previous empirical evidence concerning the innovation effects on the production efficiency is yet weak, the paper attempts to bridge this gap. The empirical findings suggest negative Marshallian externalities, while Jacobian externalities have no statistical impact on the job creation process. The findings are of strategic importance for governments who are developing industrial strategies for renewable energy.

During the past 15 years, Swedish higher education policy has emphasized the spatial decentralization of post-secondary education. We investigate the economic effects of this decentralization policy on productivity and output per worker. We rely upon a 14-year panel of output and employment for Sweden’s 285 municipalities, together with data on the location of university-based researchers and students, to estimate the effects of exogenous changes in educational policy upon regional development. We find important and significant effects of this policy upon the average productivity of workers, suggesting that the economic effects of the decentralization on regional development are economically important. We also find evidence of highly significant, but extremely localized, externalities in productivity. This is consistent with recent findings (e.g., Rosenthal and Strange, 2003) on agglomeration in ‘knowledge industries.’

The paper investigates the role of dynamic externalities, university-industry linkages and role of social networking in the biotechnology industry in the European Union (EU). Universities act as platforms for local knowledge spillovers and university-industry cluster development in the biotechnology field. The R&D activities at universities contribute to successful business innovations. However, the relationship between the universities and the local innovation capabilities is much more complex and therefore requires more in-depth analysis. The following study derives from the knowledge of the new economic geography, endogenous growth theory, biotechnology, as well as theories of social capital and social networks. The quantitative research elaborates contemporary literature and databases to find channels of interdependence between local university-based knowledge flows, social capital, and biotechnology cluster performance. The results of the study show that the biotechnology industry relies very much on university-business R&D partnerships and research mobility (e.g. pharmaceutical firms that performed basic research in close cooperation with academia produced more patents). In addition, social networking and informal contacts seem to be a more important for the diffusion of knowledge, especially at the beginning of R&D process, as they allow for building credibility between potential partners.

A favourable economic-geographical position (EGP) of regions and cities is one of the factors of their socio-economic development. Economic agents can take advantages of their proximity to the major markets of goods and services, thereby reducing their transport costs and increasing their profitability. In the sphere of innovation, proximity to the innovation centres may also significantly affect the creation of new knowledge and technologies, due to the existence of tacit knowledge and knowledge spillovers. The authors propose the term ‘innovation-geographical position’ by analogy with EGP. It has been demonstrated that location matters to regional innovation output. If there is 1 % more new technologies in neighbouring regions, there are approximately 0.35–0.58 % more newly created technologies in the target region. Proximity to the world centres of new technologies has even greater impact.

The article deals with the issue of knowledge spillovers in the European regions. For this purpose, a standard Knowledge Production Function (KPF) approach was extended by the application of spatial econometrics methods. Our analysis started from the construction of the alternative structures of the spatial weight matrices. These matrices were based on technological and institutional proximities, which represent compelling alternatives to geographic proximity regarded as a kind of all-encompassing connectivity measure. The next step in our analysis was the modeling of regional knowledge generation processes. We treated R&D expenditures and human resources in science and technology as the input measures and patent applications to the European Patent Offce as the output measure in our basic and extended models. The results show that the scope and direction of knowledge spillovers are sensitive to the type of knowledge (tacit vs. codified) and proximity dimension engaged. These findings contribute to the current debate in the geography of innovation and economics of knowledge literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a theoretical model that focuses on the effects of international knowledge spillovers on the country's horizontal (variety expansion) and vertical (quality-improving) R&D efforts in less developed countries (LDC). The novelty of the approach is that it studies the effect of cross-country knowledge spillovers in the framework of a second-generation endogenous growth model without scale effect. The structure of the market, the level of R&D expenditures, and the rate of economic growth are endogenously determined by the level of knowledge spillovers. The effect of cross-country knowledge spillovers on the return to R&D is ambiguous. It depends on the relative dominance of market interaction versus technological interaction among firms in LDC. The R&D expenditures by the firms in the developed countries may reduce incentives to vertical innovations in LDC; however, our results emphasize the importance of developing domestic R&D projects and improving the efficiency of those projects for LDC rather than relying on foreign knowledge spillovers. In the presence of sunk costs, nonetheless, running efficient R&D projects is justified only when the country is relatively large in size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the influence of path dependence, of spatial spillovers and of production specialization on regional technological specialization. We use patent data and characteristics of industrial activity by Brazilian regions in the period of 2000–2011 to estimate a spatial dynamic panel using the Generalised Method of Moment (GMM) estimator, which deals with unobserved fixed effects and with the endogeneity problem. The results show that the regional production specialization influences technological specialization in Brazilian regions. Furthermore, this article finds that regional technological development is highly path-dependent and characterized by spatial spillovers. The former result means that regional technological development is influenced by its own technological specialization trajectory. The latter shows that the technological specialization of the neighborhood has proved to be a determining factor in local technological specialization. These results may help in the understanding of the development of technological clusters, suggesting that the strategies to reinforce the regional innovation processes should consider the specificities of the regional production pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the nature of Schumpeterian competition between entrants and incumbents. We argue that incumbents may respond to the threat of entry by either attacking the entrant or trying to learn from it, and that entrants, in turn, may react by either reciprocating the incumbent's advances or retreating from it. Putting these competitive choices together, we develop a framework of four distinct potential scenarios of Schumpeterian competition. In particular, we emphasize a scenario we term creative divergence, wherein incumbents try to learn from entrants and build on their technologies, but their investments to do so cause entrants to retreat, resulting in diminishing returns to learning investments by incumbents. Exploratory analyses of the U.S. cardiovascular medical device industry find patterns consistent with the creative divergence scenario, with incumbent knowledge investments helping them to learn from entrants, but these learning benefits being undermined as entrants move away from incumbents. The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1264. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the effect of knowledge spillovers on new firm formation across Greek regions in manufacturing over the period 2002–2010. The econometric analysis results reveal that knowledge spillovers, as proxied by innovation and high-tech labor measures, positively affect regional new firm formation rates. Intra-sectoral spillovers, as captured by geographic sectoral specialization and industrial intensity, also positively affect regional new firm formation. In contrast, inter-sectoral spillovers, as proxied by regional industrial diversity, reduce new firm formation across regions. The examination of other control variables suggests that GDP growth and small firms stimulate regional new firm formation, whereas sunk costs and unemployment have a discouraging effect. [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]

A compelling body of research has found that investments in knowledge from other firms and universities spill over to enhance the performance of entrepreneurial firms. This literature has shown that firm performance is positively related to investments in new knowledge by other firms and research universities. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by positing that public sector knowledge is also conducive to enhancing performance by knowledge intensive entrepreneurial (KIE) firms. Our findings suggest that the public sector provides a fertile source of knowledge for enhancing KIE firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a climate policy model with directed technological change (DTC) in the energy sector. The model delivers both analytical and numerical results that give a clear understanding of the respective roles of research subsidies and emissions pricing. By contrast to existing models with DTC, ours is close in structure to recent integrated assessment models, leading to dramatically different results. Although clean-research subsidies are substantial initially, they subsequently decline whereas emissions taxes increase without bound. Furthermore, emissions taxes are far more important than research subsidies: in our baseline parameterization, a regulator unable to tax can only achieve 36% of potential benefits, whereas a regulator unable to subsidize can achieve 91% of potential benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evolutionary economic geography studies have stressed technological relatedness as a key explanatory factor for regional industrial diversification. It is further argued that firms that manufacture products with dense connections to regional industrial structure benefit the most from local knowledge spillovers and thus should grow faster. Based on a firm-level dataset on China's manufacturing industry over the 1998-2008 period, our results indicate that the density of links between a firm's products and local industrial structure does yield firm performance enhancing spillovers. We further decompose the overall density indicator and point out the lack of connections between firms of different ownership types in terms of information exchange and technological diffusion. Finally, empirical results confirm that regional institutions play a critical role in the spillover diffusion between firms of different ownership structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is not merely to counter assertions about technology leakage/spillovers being innocuous or benevolent, but to go further and illuminate an under-researched question: How can companies seek the optimum balance between conscious disclosure and secrecy? The article works towards a theory of optimum disclosure, by identifying possible benefits and costs of disclosure or openness. In Paradigm 1, most companies find the net benefits of disclosure/openness to be negative. In Paradigm 2, applicable to a few highly networked or open-source MNEs, there could be net benefits over a limited range and up to an optimum point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge externalities affect high and low growth firms differently. This paper develops two theoretical arguments. The knowledge equilibrium argument postulates that knowledge externalities weaken high growth firms for the benefit of low growth firms until performance differences vanish. The knowledge competition argument proposes that high growth firms are better positioned to identify, attract, and integrate knowledge, thereby expanding the performance gap between high and low growth firms. Based on 188,936 observations of 32,736 Swedish firms from 2004 to 2011, it is analysed whether knowledge externalities enable high growth firms to surge ahead or low growth firms to catch up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the factors driving nanotechnology development in Chinese regions. Advanced regions of China have spearheaded the country's rapid growth in nanotechnology, aided by substantial support from the government. While this head start could potentially perpetuate regional inequalities through agglomeration economies, the results suggest that knowledge spillovers exert a substantially greater impact in peripheral regions compared with the advanced ones, and may thus be compensating for the limited institutional support they receive and their weak technological capabilities. This research contributes to the regional innovation literature by highlighting that a formal scientific network can counteract the forces of agglomeration economies and spur innovation in peripheral regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When potential beneficiaries share their knowledge and attitudes about a policy intervention, their decision to participate and the effectiveness of both the policy and its evaluation may be influenced. This matters most notably in integrated social policies with several components. We examine spillover effects on take-up behaviors in the context of a conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. We exploit exogenous variations in the local frequency of beneficiaries generated by the program's randomized evaluation. A higher treatment density in the areas surrounding the evaluation villages increases the take-up of scholarships and enrollment at the lower-secondary level. These cross-village spillovers operate exclusively within households receiving another component of the program, and do not carry over larger distances. While several tests reject heterogeneities in impact due to spatial variations in program implementation, we find evidence to suggest that spillovers stem partly from the sharing of information about the program among eligible households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We quantify the impact of scientific grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on patenting by pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. Our article makes two contributions. First, we use newly constructed bibliometric data to develop a method for flexibly linking specific grant expenditures to private-sector innovations. Second, we take advantage of idiosyncratic rigidities in the rules governing NIH peer review to generate exogenous variation in funding across research areas. Our results show that NIH funding spurs the development of private-sector patents: a $10 million boost in NIH funding leads to a net increase of 2.7 patents. Though valuing patents is difficult, we report a range of estimates for the private value of these patents using different approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the direct positive effects of public cluster policy on subsidized industries are beyond controversy, the impact of such policy interventions on non-subsidized industries within the same region, that is, the indirect effect of public cluster policy, remains vague and unexplored. This study examines the impact of a prominent public cluster policy in Germany, the so-called Leading-Edge Cluster Competition. Based on a unique dataset, we analyse the spillover effects of this cluster policy initiative on those firms and industries, which have not been the primary target of the cluster policy. Our results suggest that public cluster policy seems to have an indirect negative effect on firms that have not primarily been related to the targeted industries; therefore, the concept of 'agglomeration shadows' might also apply to industries and related firms. Despite the existence of knowledge flows induced by additional governmental funding within a region, non-subsidized industries, that is, non-targeted firms, seem to be unable to compete against targeted industries and, therefore, suffer from a lack of human, financial and social capital. Based on our findings, we propose policy recommendations on how to best identify policy instruments aimed at augmenting innovation-driven growth across a broad spectrum of industries and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University Spin-Offs (USOs) are actively involved in the knowledge spillover process and fully integrated in the regional innovation systems. Drawing on the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship and using a multilevel approach of analysis, we explore whether the region's knowledge spillover and the firm's absorptive capacity jointly determine the innovative performance of USOs. At regional level, technological spillovers, production spillovers, and human capital spillovers have been considered. The results from a cross-national panel sample of 401 and 711 Spanish and Italian USOs, over the period 2005–13 and located in twenty-two administrative regions, show that only the production spillovers have a significant positive effect on the USO's innovative activity. Firm-specific characteristics are important for explaining USOs' innovation. More specifically, firm age has a negative effect, while firm size seems to have a positive effect. Additionally, USOs active in high-tech sectors seem to perform better in their innovation activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how and why entrepreneurship has emerged as a key component of economic policy to enhance the economic growth performance. Understanding the linkages between entrepreneurship and economic growth requires drawing upon four disparate literatures: international trade and growth, innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic geography. Integrating the key insights from these literatures provides a framework highlighting the important role played by entrepreneurship in economic policy knowledge to enhance the economic growth performance, particularly at the local and regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s certain retail companies have evolved into some of the largest and most dispersed transnational corporations worldwide. However, within the 'new era of retail distribution' retailers are increasingly divesting from foreign markets. This study addresses these recent and under-explored dynamics by revealing the traces transnational retail corporations leave after divesting from a country. It explores the aspect of learning of host market retailers from entering transnational corporations (TNCs) and examines how foreign knowledge is adjusted in the business strategies of these local actors. It takes a fresh empirical slant using qualitative interviews with host market retail managers including former TNCs' subsidiaries operating under domestic ownership. The emerging economy of Turkey serves as an empirical example. The paper finds that foreign retailers transfer firm-specific resources to the local retail through (1) demonstration and imitation, (2) vertical linkages with suppliers, (3) joint ventures and acquisitions, and (4) labor turnover of TNC trained staff. Certain successful local companies adjust the foreign knowledge based on their local knowledge and strengths, their high level of flexibility and deep territorial embeddedness, and create 'hybrid' business strategies. These findings suggest that dynamic capabilities are crucial to successful retailing in an international competitive environment. TNC managers should work with local staff in partnerships of equals and managers of locally operating companies should incorporate new knowledge by hiring TNC trained staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]