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PurposeThis paper examines the innovation behavior of family-owned firms versus non-family-owned firms. The role of internal family governance and the influence of external stimuli (competition) on innovation are also considered.Design/methodology/approachThe data of 20,995 family and non-family firms across 38 countries are derived from the World Bank Enterprise Survey during the period 2019–2020. Probit models are used to examine the impact of family ownership, family governance, and competition on innovation outcomes.FindingsFamily firms are more likely to make R&D investments, acquire external knowledge, engage in product innovation (including innovations that are new to the market) and process innovation, relative to non-family firms. However, a high propensity of family member involvement in top management positions can reduce innovation. Competition has a negative impact on innovation outcomes for both family and non-family firms, but it has a positive moderating effect on the innovation activities of family firms where a higher level of family member involvement in management is present.Originality/valueThis paper provides novel insights into family firm innovation dynamics by identifying family firms as more innovative than non-family firms for all types of indicators, debunking the idea that family firms are conservative, reluctant to change, and averse to the risks in innovation activities. However, too much family involvement in decision making may stifle some innovation activities in family firms, except in cases where the operating environment is highly competitive; this provides new insights into the ownership-management dynamic of family firms.

Using a novel self-reported measure competitive intensity and four distinct forms of innovation (product, process, marketing and organisational) from the European Commission Flash Eurobarometer 433 dataset, this paper comprehensively identifies the impact of competitive pressure on firm innovation for four broad sectors of the economy. A logit model by innovation type is used to estimate the impact of the intensity of competition on the firm’s decision to innovate. Firm reported intensity of competition is found to have a positive impact on product and market innovation. Significant heterogeneities exist in the impact of minor and major degrees of competition across innovation types and sectors supporting both Arrow’s (1962), and to a lesser degree Schumpeter’s (1943), perspectives on this relationship.

The subsidiaries of foreign-owned multinational firms make significant contributions to national Research and Development (R&D) in many host countries. Policymakers in host countries often support subsidiaries’ R&D efforts, through R&D grants and R&D tax credits. A key objective of this funding is to leverage R&D-driven firm performance benefits for the host economy. However, the subsidiary's parent firm may decide not to commercially exploit the results from host country-funded R&D projects, in the host country. Therefore, supporting subsidiaries’ R&D presents a unique risk, that significant amounts of scarce public R&D funding may translate into little, or no firm performance payoffs for the host economy. To address this issue, we construct a unique panel dataset, containing 24,404 observations of firms in Ireland over a 10-year period. Using this rich data, we first evaluate the impact of R&D grants and R&D tax credits on subsidiaries’ R&D. We then examine the link between policy-induced R&D from each policy instrument, and subsidiaries’ firm performance in the host country. Our study provides the first evaluation of (1) whether public R&D funding stimulates additional R&D investment in subsidiaries, (2) whether policy-induced R&D drives subsidiaries’ firm performance in the host country, and (3) the differential effects of R&D grants and R&D tax credits. We find that both R&D policy instruments drive subsidiary R&D, and that the policy-induced R&D results in substantial host country improvements in turnover, exports, and value added. Our results suggest several policy implications, particularly for economies pursuing an R&D strategy which targets foreign-owned subsidiaries.

Individual socio-demographic characteristics influence the composition of residential environments, employment considerations and transport-dedicated resources, all of which influence individual travel behaviours. To analyse these interrelationships, we employ generalised structural equation modelling using individual-level data from the 2016 Irish Census on workers across the Republic of Ireland alongside highly spatially disaggregated residential built and social environment data. This allows us to consider the non-linear relationships between multiple variables known to influence travel behaviours and provide direction for future policymaking. We find that regardless of socio-demographic compositions, increased developmental compactness and infrastructure quality are associated with increased public and active travel.

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 16(4) (2021). The first paper adopts a higher order spatial autoregressive model with endogenous spatial weight matrices. The second paper in...

PurposeThis article examines the links between average city size, fiscal decentralisation, and national economic growth in 33 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.Design/methodology/approachThe data in this paper comprise an unbalanced panel dataset which contains economic growth indicators, average city size, fiscal decentralisation indicators and control variables in 33 OECD member countries from 1975 to 2015 in five-year intervals. Fixed-effects (FE) estimators are used for the analysis.FindingsThis research finds i) countries with larger weighted average city sizes have higher economic growth, ii) countries with greater fiscal decentralisation have higher economic growth, but iii) countries with larger weighted average city sizes with greater decentralisation have lower rates of economic growth.Originality/valueThe research highlights the importance of agglomerations and decentralised governance and management for economic growth. While the findings are consistent with previous evidence that larger city sizes and fiscal decentralisation are separately associated with higher rates of economic growth, the authors find countries which have larger cities and greater fiscal decentralisation experience lower rates of economic growth highlighting a need for caution on decentralisation agendas in such cases. The implications of this suggest policymakers should proceed with caution on decentralisation agendas in countries with large cities.

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 16(3) (2021) in order to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends and knowledge. The first paper analyses ...

Since late 2019, COVID-19 has devastated the global economy, with indirect implications for the environment. As governments’ prioritized health and implemented measures such as the closure of non-essential businesses and social distancing, many workers have lost their jobs, been furloughed, or started working from home. Consequently, the world of work has drastically transformed and this period is likely to have major implications for mobility, transportation and the environment. This paper estimates the potential for people to engage in remote work and social distancing using O*NET data and Irish Census data and calculates the potential emission savings, by commuter type from a switch to remote working and occupational social distancing. The results show that while those who commute by car have a relatively high potential for remote work, they are less likely to be able to engage in social distancing in their workplace. While this may be negative for employment prospects in the short run, our analysis indicates that this pattern has the potential for positive environmental implications in the short and long run.

A key question regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the uncertainty around the implications of social distancing measures and remote working is how it will economically impact people and places differently We generate two indices which capture (i) social distancing potential and (ii) remote working potential This is accomplished using occupational level data from O*NET The paper identifies that social distancing and remote working potential differs considerably across occupations, sectors and places At a town level ? more affluent, dense and highly populated, better educated, and better broadband provisioned towns have greater potential for social distancing and remote working

This editorial summarises the papers published in issue 15.4 in order to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends and knowledge. The first paper challenges the standard notion that more growth is better. The second paper challenges macroeconomic models by looking at them from a regional micro-grounded lens, where the effect of productivity shocks depends on the distribution of economic activity and the locations where shocks occur. The third paper investigates the wage-productivity nexus using the latest techniques on cross-sectional dependence. The fourth paper introduces a new method to determine regional price differentials. The fifth paper tests whether economic-theoretical insights obtained from urban economic models apply not only to cities in developed countries but also to those in developing countries. The sixth paper sets out an estimation method for a spatial random coefficients model for clusters of observations. The seventh paper proposes a new method for regionalizing national input-output tables. The final paper focuses on Big Data and its role in regional growth.

This paper examines differences in the hazard rates of young, established and mature firms during the financial crisis, using microdata from more than 300,000 Irish firms. The findings confirm that firm size at the time of the crisis had the largest impact on the probability of exit. The liability of smallness was pronounced in mature cohorts. Industry conditions had a considerable effect on the hazard rate of young cohorts, as opposed to mature counterparts. Interestingly, agglomeration raised the hazard rates of younger cohorts only. By contrast, attributes of the labour force of the region largely influenced the hazard rates of more established firms. Firms founded before the crisis were significantly less likely to exit in the aftermath of the crisis, in comparison with firms founded just before or during the crisis, whereas more mature firms seem to be more sensitive to the economic cycle.

PurposeThis paper combines the concepts of search depth and cognitive proximity to investigate the impact of intense collaboration with different external agents on firms' innovation performance. It empirically tests whether firms that draw deeply on cognitively proximate collaborative partners are more innovative than those collaborating intensively with cognitively distant partners. It explores whether the impact of each external agent is equally important in determining the innovation output of firms.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from the Irish Community Innovation Survey 2012–2014, this paper employs a probit model to empirically test the impact of collaboration with cognitively proximate and distant sources of external knowledge to establish whether their impact on innovation performance is uniform.FindingsThe results show that not all collaborators equally impact firm innovation performance. Firms who indicate that knowledge sourced from backward linkages with suppliers is highly important are more likely to engage in both product and process innovation, with the effect more pronounced for the former. The extent of this is greatest for backward linkages compared to forward, horizontal and public linkages. Public linkages have the weakest impact on innovation output which raises questions from a policy perspective given the focus on university–industry collaboration for innovation. The findings indicate that collaboration with cognitively proximate sources of knowledge benefits firms' innovation output.Originality/valueThe study provides empirical evidence on the role of intense collaboration with cognitively proximate and distant external knowledge sources to explore their impact on the subsequent innovation performance of firms. The results can be used to help shape firm-level innovation policy, and indeed national policy, to promote innovation performance.

PurposeThis paper analyses the impact of institutional proximity, cognitive proximity and geographical proximity (in the form of agglomeration economies) on the firm-level productivity of foreign-owned firms in Ireland. The analysis of agglomeration economies, consisting of internal economies of scale, localization economies, related variety and urbanization economies, has a strong pedigree in regional economics literature. Increasingly, however, alternative explanations of firm-level productivity performance have been explored with institutional and cognitive proximity often identified as other important determinants of performance. This paper presents an analysis of the importance of agglomeration economies (based on geographical proximity) versus institutional and cognitive proximity (which may be a-spatial).Design/methodology/approachA series of measures capturing regional level agglomeration economies are generated as well as measures of institutional and cognitive proximity. The impact of these effects on foreign-owned firm-level productivity is analysed using data from the Irish Census of Industrial Local Units 2009. The estimation method employed is general method of moments (GMM) which allows for the potential endogeneity of variables within the system of analysis.FindingsThe results reveal that institutional proximity has a positive impact on productivity. A possible reason for this result is that local units of the same nationality are sharing knowledge in relation to successfully conducting business in Ireland. However, cognitive proximity is found to be statistically insignificant. Agglomeration economies are also important with urbanization economies and the availability of skilled labour having a positive effect on productivity.Originality/valueThe key contributions of this paper are as follows; firstly, the paper provides the first test of the institutional and cognitive proximity hypotheses on productivity while also controlling for a series of internal and external agglomeration economies. Secondly, the analysis considers, firm level, regional level and national level indicators as determinants of firm's productivity. In combining micro and macro level indicators, the paper attempts to answer the call of Van Oort et al. (2012) for such analyses. Thirdly, the paper provides the first detailed examination of the role of ‘proximity’ on foreign-owned manufacturing firms in the Irish context.

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 15(2) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper combines a conditionally autoregressive process from the spatial statistics literature with a spatial Durbin error model from the spatial econometrics literature. The second paper feeds a multistage and multilevel data envelopment analysis with a microeconomic foundation. The third paper provides empirical evidence that Flegg's location quotient combined with a gravity model produces the most accurate interregional input-output multipliers. The fourth paper investigates the impact of inventor networks on the number of patents per capita in Brazil.

Since 2000 and the launch of Science Foundation Ireland, Irish policymakers have been involved in a large-scale national science policy programme. Starting from a position with little pre-existing research infrastructure beyond its traditional higher education system, Ireland allocated significant public resources to rapidly develop an extensive research centres programme. These centres are designed to harness knowledge embedded in the national science base to impact firm-level Research and Development (R&D). Each research centre focuses on basic and applied research (as opposed to development), targeted at prioritised sectors of the economy. Using a novel panel dataset (2007–2017), our analysis provides the first evaluation of these research centres. Results indicate that research centre collaborations increase firm-level R&D, and, over time, re-orientate collaborating firms' R&D towards more applied research. We also consider how impacts vary depending on the firms’ characteristics (size and sector), and research centre characteristics. Our findings demonstrate that Ireland's policy programme improved firms' R&D profile, and suggest key policy lessons for other economies who might consider adopting a similar strategy.\ud \ud

Our study analyses how firms’ internal financial resources impact their engagement in scientific research, development, and five innovation activities. Furthermore, we investigate how firm-size moderates the impact of firms’ internal financial resources on scientific research, development, and innovation. Our approach provides novel insights regarding whether more money leads to more research and innovation, a topic that remains highly contested in the literature. Our analysis uses a novel unbalanced panel dataset of 1,446 firms in Ireland, over the period 2008–2016. Levels of internal financial resources are found to positively impact larger-sized firms’ (50+ employees) engagement in scientific research, process innovation and product innovation. However, such resources tend to hinder small-sized firms’ (less than 50 employees) engagement in service and organisational innovation. Our research refines innovation theory by reconciling contrasting views regarding the importance of financial resources for research and innovation, and offers novel insights for informing related public policy interventions.

The concept of ‘sustainable retail development’ implies that retail centres should serve their communities economically and socially, while not degrading local environments. However, existing evidence shows that shopping malls often negatively impact both the core and peripheries of city regions from environmental, social, and economic perspectives. This paper adapts commuting data to estimate the hypothetical shopping-related emissions associated with travelling to-and-from retail centres. We perform this analysis at the Small Area level for Ireland’s five major city regions. Our results suggest that the environmental degradation from retail centres increases as distances from urban cores increase.

This editorial summarises the papers published in issue 14(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper analyses the impact of re-exports on bilateral trade data. The second paper proposes a new measure for the popular smart specialisation index (S3). The third paper proposes a new solution for the so-called reflection problem in spatial or social interaction models. The fourth paper analyses bankruptcy spillovers in the state of Maryland. The final paper estimates a system of equations to analyse the mutual relationship between the domestic migration of highly-skilled graduates and innovation and productivity in U.S. states.

Automation is expected to have strong implications for labour-saving technologies. We calculate the proportion of jobs at high risk of automation across European regions using data from the 2018 Labour Force Survey (LFS). We examine the relationship between regional vulnerability to job automation, specialization, related (and unrelated) variety and agglomeration. The results indicate that regions at low vulnerability to job automation benefit from unrelated variety and high population density. Regions with higher proportions of clerical support workers, craft and related trade workers, and plant and machine operators and assemblers are likely to face greater disruption.

Agglomeration economies are benefits that firms obtain when they locate close to one another or are constrained spatially. Tourism is heavily reliant on agglomeration economies rather than mere resource endowments. Policy formation requires an understanding of how tourism agglomeration impacts entrepreneurship within regions. In this chapter, we focus on how agglomeration economies impact enterprise birth and death rates within the tourism sector in Ireland using a comprehensive dataset on tourism firm births and deaths. Agglomeration economies have been studied in the area of regional economic growth and prosperity, but less is known about the extent to which spatial agglomeration economies affect regional firm births and deaths in the tourism sector. Our results provide evidence of positive spatial dependence in regional tourism enterprise births and deaths. Co-location of a diverse set of complementary enterprises fosters greater tourism enterprise births. Greater local specialisation rather than diversity lowers regional tourism enterprise deaths.

This paper compares the merits of regional and firm based approaches for analysing the effect of agglomeration economies on firm deaths in Ireland. We aggregate a comprehensive data set on Irish firm deaths to Electoral Division (ED) level, the lowest geographical scale available. Estimates of the effect of agglomeration on firm deaths from a regional analysis at ED level using a cross-sectional spatial-autoregressive spatial error model are compared with firm-level estimates from a contemporary log-log model with spatially weighted agglomeration regressors. While estimates of the effects of agglomeration using these alternative methods is much discussed in existing literature rarely are the approaches or results compared. We show that contrasting results are found using the same data set dependent upon the unit of analysis used. Diversity lowers regional and firm deaths while specialisation raises regional deaths but lowers firm deaths. Greater urbanisation does not have a significant effect on firm hazard rates or equivalent regional estimates. While regional estimates provide evidence on the existence and nature of spatial dependence (negative in this case), firm estimates do not provide evidence that agglomeration in neighbouring regions is the source of this spatial dependence. No empirical analysis to our knowledge directly compares regional and firm based approaches for analysing the effect of spatial agglomeration economies on firm deaths.

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 14(1) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper applies the Shapley-based decomposition approach to determine the impact of firm-, linkage- and location-specific factors to the survival probability of enterprises. The second paper applies Bayesian comparison methods to identify simultaneously the most likely spatial econometric model and spatial weight matrix explaining new business creation. The third paper compares the performance of continuous and discrete approaches to explain subjective well-being across space. The fourth paper applies a multiple imputation approach to determine regional purchasing power parities at the NUTS-3 level using data available at the NUTS-2 level. Finally, the last paper constructs a regional input-output table for Japan from its national counterpart using and comparing the performance of four non-survey techniques.

This virtual special issue of Spatial Economic Analysis marks the keynote lecture by Professor Sergio Rey of the University of California - Riverside at the 58th Annual Congress of the European Regional Science Association in Cork, Ireland. It draws together nine papers from previous issues of the journal that deal with regional and spatial inequalities, a central theme of regional science in general and Rey's research in particular, thereby providing an overview of the main sources of regional and spatial inequalities both within and across countries.

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 13(3) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper challenges the home market hypothesis that large countries host more firms relative to their size than small countries by considering the lobbying activities of multinational firms. The second paper analyzes the implications of a spatial weight matrix used to estimate a spatial econometric model that depends on an endogenous economic variable. By adding a spatial context, the third paper provides a novel contribution to the literature on international norms in de facto measures of human rights performance. The fourth paper examines the determinants of accepting informal work in Poland. The fifth paper deals with non-stationarity and cointegration in a dynamic spatial econometric panel data model when the number of observations in the time - rather than in the cross-sectional- domain tends to infinity.

Purpose Growing evidence suggests regional economic factors impact on individual outcomes, such as life expectancy and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact that player-specific and regional differences have on the number of senior international appearances football players accumulate over the course of their careers, for six UEFA member countries, from 1993 to 2014. Design/methodology/approach The research employs a Poisson regression model to analyse the impact of individual and regional factors on the number of senior international caps a footballer receives over the course of their career. Findings The results indicate that both individual and regional variables can explain the number of caps a player receives over the course of their career. The authors find that an individual’s career length positively influences the number of international caps accrued. Players born in wealthier and more populous regions accumulate a greater number of international appearances. Distance from the capital has no effect, however, the number of youth academies in the player’s region of birth has a significant positive effect. Research limitations/implications The analysis is limited to regional variations within economically developed states. It would be interesting to test whether the correlation between relative regional development and international success exists in less developed countries. The authors only address mens international football in this study and cannot comment on the generality of the findings across genders or sports. Practical implications The results can provide insights for local football authorities and policy makers concerned with regional characteristics and those interested in the development of elite talent. Originality/value This is the first study to analyse a pan-European data set, using an increasingly adopted econometric method to understanding regional economic development – Poisson modelling.

Using data on league position for clubs that have participated in English football leagues for 21 seasons, this paper tests, using spatial econometric techniques, whether clubs’ within-season performances are positively affected by better performances of other clubs located geographically closer to them. The paper provides evidence of positive spatial dependence between clubs’ performance. This means that proximity to high-performing clubs drives others to perform better, ceteris paribus. This is consistent with the view in regional analysis that spatial factors are important considerations in understanding business performance.

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 13(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper develops an economic geography model with trade costs in all sectors and different shares of unskilled labour in all locations. The second paper translates an economic geography model into a dynamic spatial econometric model and then estimates the unknown parameters to test for congestion spillover effects among Chinese cities. The following paper also investigates spillover effects, but of sovereign and banking risks across countries. The fourth paper empirically examines if a higher market potential results in higher average productivity and lower productivity dispersion of Italian retailers. The fifth paper demonstrates that modelling more than one spatial lag in the independent variables, using different specifications of the spatial weight matrix, can be used as a tool to correct for an omitted variable bias. The final paper develops a test for the existence of non-parametric non-linearities in a linear spatial econometric model.

Raising the bar (6). Spatial Economic Analysis. This editorial summarizes and comments on the papers published in issue 12(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper addresses the question of whether ‘jobs follow people’ or ‘people follow jobs’. The second paper develops a new methodology to determine functional regions. The third paper is a major contribution to the growing literature on new modelling approaches and applications of disaster impact models. The fourth paper focuses on the costs and benefits of higher education. The fifth paper develops a two-step procedure to identify endogenously spatial regimes in the first step using geographically weighted regression, and to account for spatial dependence in the second step. Finally, the sixth paper estimates a dynamic spatial panel data model to explain house prices and to show that restricted housing supply in the city of Cambridge, UK, has some undesirable labour market effects.

This paper analyses the impact of stimulating staff creativity and idea generation on the likelihood of innovation. Using data for over 3,000 firms, obtained from the Irish Community Innovation Survey 2008-2010, we examine the impact of six creativity generating stimuli on product, process, organisational and marketing innovation. Our results indicate that the stimuli impact the four forms of innovation in different ways. For instance, brainstorming and multidisciplinary teams are found to stimulate all forms of innovation, rotation of employees is found to stimulate organisational innovation, while financial and non-financial incentives are found to have no effect on any form of innovation. We also find that the co-introduction of two or more stimuli increases the likelihood of innovation more than implementing stimuli in isolation. These results have important implications for management decisions in that they suggest that firms should target their creative efforts towards specific innovation outcomes.

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 14(2) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper deals with past and current challenges for regional science research. The second paper investigates whether people living in deprived neighbourhoods have less chance of succeeding in a job application. The third paper finds evidence that real estate firms can avoid price competition when market shares of their allies increase in the vicinity. The fourth paper is methodological: it considers a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model with heterogeneous coefficients and extensively analyzes the impact of this extension on the direct and indirect effects estimates. The fifth paper proposes an innovative method to estimate the elements of the spatial weight matrix in a spatial econometric model. The final paper is econometric-theoretical: it proposes a new generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator of the coefficients of a SAR model if the error terms are heteroskedastic of an unknown form.

peer-reviewed Policy-makers at regional, national and European Union (EU) levels of governance use a variety of subsidy programmes to stimulate firm-level innovation. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates three important issues that have not received sufficient attention in the literature: (1) whether evaluating the impact of subsidies from each individual source is biased by ignoring firms that receive a mix of subsidies from different sources at the same point in time; (2) whether receiving a mix of subsidies from regional, national and EU sources crowds out firm-level innovation; and (3) if effective, whether subsidy mix stimulates forms of innovation with higher private or social returns. The findings demonstrate that ignoring subsidy mix significantly biases evaluations of subsidies from individual sources. Moreover, subsidy mix can be a highly effective means of stimulating forms of firm-level innovation with the highest social returns, precisely where market and systemic failures are most acute

Significant empirical research has highlighted the existence of pork barrel politics. This is where public expenditure is targeted at particular regions based on the logic of collective action: political entrepreneurs maximize their chances of re-election by searching for and implementing programs or projects characterized by ‘concentrated benefits’ for key constituents and broadly dispersed costs. Using data on capital grants to Irish sports teams for 1998–2015, this paper analyzes the extent to which an informal rule can correct this bias. The case of allocating sports capital grants is particularly interesting since academic research, media commentary, and ministerial statements all seem to confirm the existence of political bias with such allocations in Ireland. Specifically, the geographical distribution of the grants are clearly linked to the Minister for Sport: that minister’s constituent county receives significantly higher per capita grant allocation than any other county. The grants were suspended in 2009 because of a fiscal crisis arising from the recession. When the grants were restored in 2012, a new informal rule for allocations was introduced. That informal rule was introduced to reduce the extent of pork barrel politics by ensuring that no county received less than 75 % or more than 150 % of the national average of the per capita grant allocations. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of that informal rule in reducing pork barrel politics in Irish sports capital grant allocations.

Management practices are important drivers of firm productivity [Bloom et al. (2019), What drives differences in management practices? American Economic Review, 109(5), 1648–1683]. While differences in the formalisation and sophistication of management practices are evident in comparisons of foreign multinationals and domestic firms [Bloom et al. (2012). Americans do IT better: US multinationals and the productivity miracle. American Economic Review, 102(1), 167–201. Bloom and Van Reenen (2007a). Measuring and explaining management practices across firms and countries, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(4), 1351–1408. Bloom and Van Reenen (2010). Why do management practices differ across firms and countries? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(1), 203–224], a striking omission from many studies is the failure to distinguish between domestic firms and domestically owned multinationals [McDonnell et al. (2012). Human resource management in multinational enterprises: Evidence from a late industrializing economy. Management International Review, 54(3), 361–380]. We merge the World Management Survey with the FAME dataset to examine the influence of firm ownership (standalone domestic firms; domestic groups; domestic owned multinationals; foreign owned multinationals) across a broad range of management practices. Foreign owned multinationals exhibit the highest formalisation and sophistication of management practices compared to all other firm types. However, significant asymmetries exist between different management practices across firm ownership. This is important as it raises questions as to whether there is sufficient learning and transfer of practices taking place across firms.

Innovation is essential for driving business survival, development, and growth. Today, managers within firms continuously search for new ways to gain competitive advantage. In many cases, this comes from the effective use of intangible assets such as workplace skills and abilities. Despite this, little is known about what types of skills are required for innovation, whether these vary by innovation-type, or whether it matters if these skills are outsourced. This paper addresses these issues using data collected on eight skill types as part of the 2008–2010 Irish Community Innovation Survey. We find that there is substantial heterogeneity in the effectiveness of skills at generating different kinds of innovation. In addition, for some types of innovation, it is best to develop the skills in-house (e.g., Engineering skills for product innovation) while for others it is best to outsource the skills (e.g., Multimedia skills for process and organisational innovation).

In addition to the three special issue papers, issue 15.1 contains two papers on input-output analysis. The first paper provides a thorough analysis of the cross entropy (CE) method to build input-output tables at sub-territorial levels or to update them in time. The second paper proposes a spatial input-output location quotient accounting for the co-location of related industries within the same area and for spatial spillovers of concentration into neighboring areas.

This paper uses data from the OECD's Scientific and Technological database and the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) to analyse the national innovation capacity of nineteen OECD countries over the time period 2001 to 2007. A total of three sub-indexes are constructed which rank the strength of the common innovation infrastructure, cluster specific environment and quality of linkages which exist within each of the countries. These sub-indexes form the basis of an overall index measuring countries' national innovation capacity. The results indicate that each of the three components considered are important in explaining the innovation output of the countries studied. Further to this, national innovation capacity is found to have a positive effect on GDP per capita and on a country's GCR ranking. However, national innovation capacity in 2001 is found to be negatively associated with the subsequent growth rate of GDP per capita. This counterintuitive result may arise due to determinants of growth other than innovation such as capital and labour accumulation.

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.

This article analyses changes in levels and composition of income inequality among US counties from 1969 to 2009. It also decomposes inequality using the Theil coefficient into between-State and within-State inequality. The article finds that income inequality has increased in the period studied with between-State inequality decreasing and within-State inequality increasing. We subsequently decompose income inequality into the proportion arising from differences in productivity and employment–population ratios across counties. The results suggest that inequality arising from differentials in labour productivity has fallen over the period studied while those arising from employment–population ratio differences have increased.