Dirk Frantzen

Technological Diffusion and Productivity Convergence: A Study for Manufacturing in the OECD

In this article is investigated the issue of total factor productivity convergence through international technological diffusion on disaggregate manufacturing panel data from 1970 to 1995 with respect to a set of OECD countries. Estimates of alternate growth equations imply conditional convergence in all industries. Leaving out the conditioning variables still implies a significant catch-up effect in a great majority of industries. These same industries are also characterized by ?-convergence and by a tendency toward a unimodal distribution of relative productivity levels. These results suggest that, during the period of investigation, total factor productivity growth performances in OECD manufacturing were dominated by transitional dynamics. Evidence in favor of the presence of a unit root in the technology gap between frontier and non-frontier countries is, therefore, misleading.

R&D and manufacturing production specialization in developed economies

A study of the relation between technology and manufacturing production specialization in a series of developed economies is performed by means of models relating indicators of revealed symmetric comparative advantage of value added and exports to similar measures of comparative performance of R&D expenditure, capital intensity, total factor productivity and wage costs. The production and R&D specialization are shown to be substantial and sticky. This contrasts with the evidence of a substantial degree of convergence in the patterns of the other variables. Regression estimates show that, although all variables play their part, the impact of comparative R&D efforts on production specialization is by far the strongest. This impact is found to be stronger in the smaller economies and it is especially important in research-intensive industries. The influence of comparative wages is, moreover, found to be positive here, suggesting the dominance of a labour skill and efficiency wage effect over a wage cost competitiveness effect. These findings are shown to conform quite well with the predictions of Schumpeterian theory and of certain contributions to ‘new trade theory’ that have stressed the importance of dynamic economies of scale.

Managing Open Innovation

Open innovation is about firms’ external relations with other firms and organisations. It is a topic which has attracted an immense amount of attention, but which has also been heavily criticised due to the diversity of the ideas and fuzziness of its key concepts. To date, the bulk of the literature on open innovation draws on case study material to illustrate the operation of firms in an anecdotal way. By contrast, this book examines open innovation practices by using large-scale datasets and stresses their impact on firm performance. The authors examine four key issues: differences between firms in open innovation practices, public funding to enhance external relations, R&D outsourcing of firms, and the role of human resources in R&D and innovation.

Research Experts’ Role in Knowledge Development and Exchange in Formal Research Cooperation

The literature on ‘distributed’ and ‘open’ innovation emphasizes the need for enterprises to exchange external knowledge in order to perform R&D and to innovate. This paper focuses on research partnerships as a way to do so. More particularly, a distinction is made between the development and the exchange of in house knowledge in formal research cooperation agreements. Learning efficiency in absorbing external knowledge, reduction of outgoing spillovers, and access to tacit knowledge and know-how are main drivers for research cooperation and are largely related to capabilities in terms of internal R&D employment. Using micro-level data provided by the OECD business R&D survey for Belgium, insights are offered in the way R&D personnel qualifications and occupations are related to knowledge generation in R&D collaboration. More specifically, it is demonstrated that both the occupational positions and the level of education of R&D managers and researchers are positively related to knowledge development and knowledge exchange in formal R&D collaboration agreements. Moreover, in terms of absorptive capacity it is found that patent registration and innovative outputs are positively related to the propensity to engage in knowledge development in R&D collaboration, but not to the engagement of knowledge exchange in R&D collaboration

Explaining production specialisation in OECD manufacturing: A study for the period 1970–1995

An analysis by means of an index of revealed comparative advantage shows that OECD manufacturing production specialisation has been substantial and rather sticky during the period 1970–1995. Global panel data regression estimates show that, of the considered variables, comparative research efforts exercise, by far, the strongest influence on production specialisation. There is also a positive impact of comparative total factor productivity, capital intensity, and even wage costs. Subdividing the sample into research and less research intensive sectors, shows that the influence of research efforts and the positive impact of wages are strongest in the research intensive part of manufacturing. Repeating estimation sector-wise suggests that, even within these groupings, there is still a degree of heterogeneity of behaviour between industries.(JEL O31, F14)