Mercedes Rodríguez

How innovative are services? an empirical analysis for Spain

The relevance of innovation as an engine of economic growth has never been denied, but the main emphasis has typically been placed on the manufacturing sector. A key step in this direction is the carrying out of innovation surveys that include the tertiary sector. Along these lines, the aim of this article is to provide evidence about the innovative character of services in Spain. Drawing on the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3) for Spain, we use factor and cluster analyses to demonstrate that services do innovate, and to locate these activities in the production system.

PATTERNS OF INNOVATION IN THE SERVICE SECTOR: SOME INSIGHTS FROM THE SPANISH INNOVATION SURVEY

Although the attention of innovation studies has traditionally been focused on manufacturing, the differential features of innovation activities carried out by services are gaining more and more relevance in innovation research. The aim of this paper is to thoroughly analyse the data from the Spanish Innovation Survey 2000, the first large-scale innovation survey that included service activities in Spain, in order to identify the main patterns of innovation in Spanish services. The results of our investigations confirm that a high degree of heterogeneity, in relation to innovation patterns, exists among service firms and among service industries as well. Nevertheless, important similarities are found between pioneer classifications, such as the theoretical taxonomy of service industries by Soete and Miozzo (1989) or the classification of service firms elaborated by Hollenstein (2003), and the taxonomy we obtained by applying multivariate analysis.

Integration and Diffusion of KIS for Industry Performance

The relative importance of business services is growing intensively, in terms of both production and employment. The main explanation for this trend is based on the changes brought about by the so-called ‘Knowledge-based economy’ (Archibugi and Lundvall, 2001; Rodrigues, 2002): economic agents and especially firms are involved in an environment that is increasingly changing and where knowledge has become the ‘key asset’. Within this context, business services, and more concretely knowledge-intensive services (KIS), play a critical role.

The knowledge-intensive services-regional innovation nexus: a European perspective

The objective of this paper is to examine the spatial distribution of knowledge-intensive services (KISs) and its relation with innovation in 194 European regions. The methodology applied is known as spatial analysis and evaluates whether there are clusters of KIS. In addition, by employing a spatial econometric model, some potential explanatory factors for the concentration of KIS are examined. The results obtained support the hypothesis that KIS are spatially concentrated and confirm the existence of clusters. Moreover, a close relationship between location of KIS and regional innovation activity is found.

Use of informal and formal care among community dwelling dependent elderly in Spain

BACKGROUND Faced with increased public spending for care, knowledge of the determinants of the choices between informal and formal care is of particular importance for estimating the need for care in the future. METHODS Using a representative sample of Spanish dependent elderly from the Disabilities, Independence and Dependency Situations Survey (DIDSS) 2008, we compare the factors associated with the reception of informal, formal and mixed care. The study included 10 703 dependent persons living at home aged ≥ 65 years. RESULTS Overall, the percentage of those receiving only informal care was high in Spain, 47.5%. Formal care was most often received in combination with informal care (9.8%) than alone (4.9%). Five out of the seven factors analysed were found to influence the reception of all types of care: age, gender, income, self-rated health and suffering a chronic condition. CONCLUSIONS There is a high coincidence among how factors affect the reception of care although some differences can be noted. Curiously, a high income level and the availability of informal care (as measured by living with a partner) can negatively affect the reception of only formal care. Living in a capital can also have an impact on the type of care a dependent elderly person receives.

Services and regional development: An analysis of their role as human capital drivers in the Spanish Regions

The complexity of economies nowadays necessitates qualified workers more than ever. Given the great share of services in production and employment, the educational attainment of the people employed in this sector has a special impact on growth. Following this reasoning, the aim of this paper is to analyse the extent to which the differences in the location of the service sector can explain the differences in human capital, and, as a consequence, in development, among the Spanish regions. The results obtained highlight the ‘human capital-intensive’ nature that a great share of service activities have, and the tendency of ‘very high-skills’ services to be concentrated in regions with higher levels of human capital.

Russia’s WTO accession and trade in services: an examination into Russia–EU relationships

A Spain-based team of economists specialized in the study of services presents the results of their research on the evolution of Russian international transactions in services in the light of its imminent accession to the WTO. The study analyzes the evolution of three out of four modes of international transactions in services with Russia’s main trading partner, the European Union. Focusing on exports and imports and on foreign direct investment, the authors aim to assess if there was any process of substitution over the period 2005–2010. Business services emerge as one of the most dynamic group in terms of international transactions.

The importance of the size of the social network and residential proximity in the reception of informal care in the European Union

ABSTRACT This paper explores which factors affect the reception of informal care among those dependent people aged 65 and over in Europe, starting from the so-called Behavioural Model of Health Service Use introduced by Andersen. The data employed are drawn from the fourth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement. The final sample consists of a total of 17,284 older dependent people of which 4529 (26.2%) received informal care. The main novelty is the incorporation of different characteristics of the social network of the individual (presence of children, size and residential proximity) among the factors that enable the reception of informal care. In particular the two latter aspects are combined in one sole indicator of distance to the social network. In addition to ‘traditional factors’ like age or degree of dependency, all the characteristics of the social network are found to influence the likelihood of receiving informal care. This reveals the need for taking into consideration the role played by social networks when governments design care programmes, especially in the current scenario of rising demand for care.

Services in Russia: past, present, and future

In spite of ambitious modernization plans of the government, structural change in Russia is not proceeding in the direction of highly developed economies. Part of the lag in the tertiarization process can be explained by the fact that, as during the Soviet period, the role of services in the economy is still ignored, particularly regarding innovation. This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the evolution of services in Russia since the mid-1990s and its future prospects by compiling data from the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, Rosstat, and the World Input–Output Database. Two complementary and novel perspectives are adopted: a production system perspective and a spatial perspective. Regarding services in the Russian production system, comparison of interindustry linkages reveals that, in addition to traditional relevant activities like wholesale/retail trade and transport and communications, business services are acquiring great importance as production process inputs. Concerning the spatial perspective, we observe a greater presence of non-market services in less densely populated federal districts, while strategic service activities are highly concentrated in the most dynamic ones. Analysis of major Russian cities confirmed the trend of business services concentrating in densely populated and highly innovative cities. In brief, services, and in particular business services, can be a means to boost innovation and growth in Russia, but more attention from political leaders is necessary for these activities. The modernization process should abandon its current “high-technology industry myopia” and take into consideration the innovative, and especially, the knowledge-diffuser role, that services can exert.

The geography of public services employment in Europe: concentration or dispersion?

It is widely known that the location of public services generates, directly and indirectly, important economic effects. The objective of this article is to examine the spatial distribution of employment in public services in 124 European regions in order to detect the existence of some pattern of spatial location. To do so we employ various exploratory spatial analysis techniques, such as the calculation of the Morans I and the Gearys C statistics. The results obtained highlight the existence of remarkable differences among the European regions, and more concretely between the Scandinavian and the Mediterranean regions, differences that deserve further study.