Henri Capron

Exploring the Spillover Impact on Productivity of World-Wide Manufacturing Firms

This paper analyzes the relationship between R&D activity, spillovers and productivity at the firm level. Particular attention is put on the formalization of technological spillovers. The analysis is based upon a new dataset composed of 625 worldwide R&D-intensive manufacturing firms whose information has been collected for the period 1987-1994. Given the panel data structure of the sample, ad hoc econometric techniques which deal with both firms unobserved heterogeneity and weak exogeneity of the right hand-side variables are implemented. The empirical results suggest that spillover effects influence significantly firms productivity. Nevertheless the effects differ substantially among the pillars of the Triad. The United States are mainly sensitive to their national stock of spillovers while Japan appears to draw from the international stock. On its side, Europe shows a tendency to internalize spillovers.

EU Pre-Competitive and Near-the-Market S&T Collaborations

EU Science & Technology (S&T) pre-competitive and near-the-market collaborations are the two main instruments of the European technological policy. In order to grasp the dynamics inherent to the technological collaborative behaviour of European research organisations and to better appreciate to what extent European countries, regions and research organisations are engaged in EU S&T cooperative aggrements, descriptive statistics and several absolute and relative indicators are performed. To that end, a analysis based on the collaborations observed through the European Framework Programme as well as the EUREKA initiative is performed. In a second step, a regression analysis is conducted to shed some light on the main determinants of the participation of EU regions to these S&T collaborations.

The Institutional Profile

If the present-day institutional profile of the Belgian innovation system can be characterised in one word, ‘complexity’ seems — as the reader who manages to struggle through this chapter will probably agree — the most obvious candidate1. However, this chapter is essential if one wants to understand the specific situation of a country like Belgium that, in a period of internationalisation and European integration, initiated a far-reaching process of regionalisation. This process has probably yet not reached its final conclusion. The major transformation with regard to science, technology and innovation occurred during the various state reforms initiated since 1980. They remodelled Belgium from a unitary national state to a federal state with a high degree of autonomy and a large number of competencies having been transferred to the regions and the ‘communities’.

R&D Expenditures and the National Innovation System

The conduct of science and technology policy differs radically in small countries from what occurs in large ones. Johnson (1988, p. 297) rightly pointed out that “the need for an institutional system is relatively strong for small countries. The possible benefits of such a system are considerable, and so are the potential costs of institutional rigidity”. He added that the coherence and the consensus-generating capacity of the institutional system are vital elements for its efficiency. As implied in the previous chapter, there is at least the suspicion that the Belgian innovation system has problems more with the volatility of its institutional setting rather than with its rigidity. High volatility leads to high uncertainty and adverse effects on the propensity to invest in technology.

The national innovation system and its international linkages

Because of its size, its geographical location, and its openness, the Belgian innovation system interacts intensely with foreign countries. The influence of foreign innovation systems on Belgium technological and economic performance is shown both by the impressive number of R&D co-operation links between Belgian and foreign firms, and by the substantial share of foreign-based firms in the Belgian production capacity and knowledge base. Patel and Pavitt (1991), for instance, estimate that about 40% of the technological activity in Belgium comes from large non-Belgian firms. This ratio is one of the highest of the industrialised countries.