Andrea Fernández-Ribas

The role of national and regional-level innovation programs in stimulating international cooperation in innovation

Innovation programmes have direct and indirect effects on enterprise strategies. In this paper we argue that national and regional programmes, not necessarily designed to increase international links, indirectly leverage international collaborative innovation, by providing additional funding, experience in domestic collaboration, and learning about public funding application rules. Our empirical findings confirm a positive (but small) influence of domestic-level programmes on the probability that a firm develops innovation with foreign partners. Implications for policy are multiple, including the need to consider systemic measures of innovation when evaluating the impacts of innovation programmes on firms behaviour.

Evaluating the Impact of MEP Services on Establishment Performance: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation

This work examines the impact of manufacturing extension services on establishment productivity. It builds on an earlier study conducted by Jarmin in the 1990s, by matching the Census of Manufacturers (CMF) with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) customer and activity datasets to generate treatment and comparison groups for analysis. The scope of the study is the period 1997 to 2002, which was a period of economic downturn in the manufacturing sector and budgetary challenges for the MEP. The paper presents some preliminary findings from this analysis. Both lagged dependent variable (LDV) and difference in difference (DiD) models are employed to estimate the relationship between manufacturing extension and labor productivity. The results presented are inconclusive and paint a mixed picture as they demonstrate the benefits and limitations of using Census microdata in program evaluation. They also point to the need to conduct analyses that could help to better understand the dynamic impact of MEP services.

Firms' global patent strategies in an emerging technology

Despite international patenting can be a costly and risky investment, an increasing number of firms patent proprietary technologies in foreign countries. This paper explores trends of global patenting in a new domain of technology characterized by rapid globalization. The research setting consists of the population of U.S.-based Large and Small and Mid-Sized firms (SMEs) filing nanotechnology-related patent applications at the World International Patent Office (WIPO) during 1996-2006.