Maria Luisa Mancusi

Technological specialization in industrial countries: Patterns and dynamics

Technological Specialization in Industrial Countries: Patterns and Dynamics. — This paper employs distribution dynamics and patent data to study the empirical dynamics of technological specialization in industrial countries. Large countries spread innovation activities across a wider range of technologies, and their specialization level in a field displays lower probability to move around its initial level (country size effects). Mobility is high and asymmetric: it is difficult to improve specialization in very disadvantaged technologies, while high comparative advantages revert towards lower specialization levels. These findings undermine the theory of technological accumulation and path dependence, its implication of persistence in trade specialization patterns and the effectiveness of targeted industrial and technology policies.

Innovation, profitability and growth in medium and high-tech manufacturing industries: Evidence from Italy

The main goal of this article is to assess the impact of product innovation on the economic performance of firms operating in Medium and High-Tech (M&HT) industries. Using information from a large and unique dataset on Italian firms we estimate, by means of Propensity Score (PS) matching methods, a positive and significant ‘innovation premium’ both in terms of profitability and growth (in the short-run) for those firms who introduced new innovative products. We also find that this innovation premium is particularly large for small firms and even more so when considering new established firms.

R&D investments, financing constraints, exporting and productivity

ABSTRACT This paper adds new empirical evidence on the mutual relationships between credit constraints, total factor productivity, Research and Development (R&D) investments and exporting, by jointly considering them in a simultaneous equation framework. Our empirical analysis focuses on a large sample of manufacturing firms from France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Our results confirm the well-known mutual positive correlation among exporting, R&D and firms productivity. They also show the existence of a mutual relationship between exporting, productivity and credit constraints: exporters and high productivity firms are less likely to be credit constrained, while better access to credit is associated with larger productivity and a higher probability of exporting. By contrast, we find no significant relation between investing in R&D and the probability to be credit constrained, conditional on exporting. This suggests that efficiency-improving strategies, mediated by the existence of credit constraints, are at the core of firm growth achieved through exporting and innovation.

Knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship: sectoral patterns in a sample of European high-tech firms

This paper studies the relative importance of prior knowledge and resources available to a startup at the time of its founding across technologies. Our analysis is based on a survey submitted to the founders of new innovative ventures patenting in the biotech, electronics and medical devices technologies. Our findings show that pre-entry knowledge about customers’ needs and characteristics, about the technology and about potential suppliers and competitors differentially affect the technological and market entrepreneurial choice of the surveyed firms. These results suggest the existence of patterns of entrepreneurial activities that are technology-specific.

National Externalities and Path‐Dependence in Technological Change: An Empirical Test

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the relevance of the hypothesis of increasing returns and path�?dependence in technological development by looking at its implications on the evolution of the technological specialization profiles of advanced countries. A recontracting process is used to formalize the idea that when national externalities are strong, countries should display the tendency to specialize in selected technologies. No evidence of such tendency towards increasing specialization is found in the data.

Dinamica e Determinanti della Specializzazione Tecnologica Internazionale

The interaction between the sectoral composition of the economy, the scientific and technological research activity of firms and universities, and the activity of large firms is considered as a crucial factor of growth in the advanced countries. This paper enquires about the relationship between the dynamics of international technological specialization, on the one hand, and market expansion and profit opportunities, accumulation of technical and scientific knowledge and market structures, on the other hand. We employ R&D and export data, patent applications and citations at the European Patent Office for six countries (US, UK, Italy, Japan, France, Germany) from 1981 to 1994 for 135 technological classes in three industrial sectors (Chemicals, Electronics and Machinery). The econometric analysis uses GMM techniques for dynamic panels and shows that international technological specialization is persistent and is positively affected by the relative effort of firms in R&D, the direction of cross-sectoral knowledge spillovers within countries and by the quality of research output by universities and public research centres. The size of the estimated relationships differs across the three industrial sectors. In addition, the paper shows that the concentration of innovative activities may have a negative impact on international technological specialization.

Export and Innovation in Small and Medium Enterprises: The Role of Concentrated Bank Borrowing

This paper assesses the role of concentrated bank borrowing in explaining the extensive and intensive margins of export, while accounting for the simultaneous relationship between exporting and innovation. Concentrated bank borrowing proxies for the intensity of the bank–firm relationship and is a strategy often pursued by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in order to overcome information asymmetries and improve access to external finance. Our results show that a tight relationship between an SME and its main bank increases both the firms probability of exporting and its export intensity. This positive effect is only marginally mediated by the SMEs increased propensity to introduce product innovation. We further discuss the financial and non†financial channels through which the intensity of the bank–firm relationship supports SMEs’ international activities.

Imprenditorialità e nascita di nuove imprese innovative in Europa: un'analisi delle determinanti in alcuni settori ad alta tecnologia

Entrepreneurship and the birth of new innovative firms in Europe: an analysis of its determinants in some high-tech sectors - This paper evaluates the importance of some key elements in the process leading to the birth and start-up of a new firm. We focus on a sample of recently founded and innovative European firms in technological fields characterised by strong innovative and competitive dynamics in the last 15 years. Emphasis is placed both on the role of the founder and on the assets exploited and developed in the new ventures early stages. The analysis of the questionnaire confirms the importance of the intellectual capital of the founder and of the scientific and technological knowledge acquired during advanced studies or previous work experiences. It further confirms the importance of the human and financial capital (particularly, access to external funds) necessary to the start of entrepreneurial activity, of intellectual property rights and of the network of relationships with actors having complementary knowledge and assets (other firms, universities and public research centres, parent organisation). The analysis finally highlights interesting differences both at the geographical and sectoral level. Differences across geographical regions include the degree of development of financial markets and the opportunities to access external financial resources, but also and mostly the functions performed and the effectiveness of the university system. On the other side, differences across sectors include the assets exploited in founding the new venture and the key competences that allow it to survive and eventually grow. Keywords: entrepreneurship, spin-off, patent Parole chiave: imprenditorialita, spin-off, brevetto Jel Classification: L10, M13, O30