Michele Cincera

Patents, R&D, and technological spillovers at the firm level: Some evidence from econometric count models for panel data

The paper analyses the relationship between the main determinants of technological activity and patent applications. To this end, an original panel of 181 international manufacturing firms investigating substantial amounts in R&D during the late 1980s has been constructed. The number of patent applications by firms is explained by current and lagged levels of R&D expenditures and technological spillovers. Technological and geographical opportunities are also taken into account as additional determinants. In order to examine this relationship, several econometric models for count panel data are estimated. These models deal with the discrete nature of patents and firm specific unobservables arising from the panel data context. The main findings of the paper are first, a high sensitivity of results to the specification of patent distribution. Second, the estimates of the preferred GMM panel data method suggest decreasing returns to scale in technological activity and finally a positive impact of technological spillovers on firms own innovation.

Financing constraints, fixed capital and R&D investment decisions of belgian firms

This paper aims at assessing the relationship between the possible existence of financial constraints and the decisions of Belgian private firms as regards their investments in both capital and R&D investments over the last decade. The main system GMM estimates from the error-correction equations indicate that the sensitivity of both types of investments to cash flow variations are rather differentiated. On the whole, these effects are more important for investments in ordinary assets, young small-scale firms located in the Walloon region that are not part of a multinational. Firms that perform R&D on a permanent basis and that receive public funds to support these activities appear to be less cash constraints.

Firms’ productivity growth and R&D spillovers: An analysis of alternative technological proximity measures

This paper aim at assessing the impact of R&D spillovers on firms’ economic performance as measured by productivity growth. The construction of R&D spillovers is based on Jaffes methodology (1988, 1996) which associates econometrics and data analysis. The main objective of the paper is to extend Jaffes methodology by examining alternative methods for measuring R&D spillovers and to test their impacts in terms of the robustness of results. In particular, the method used to classify firms into technological clusters as well as the metrics implemented to appreciate firms’ technological proximities which enter the construction of spillovers are further investigated. In addition to R&D spillovers, firms’ own R&D capital, labour and physical capital are estimated by means of a Cobb–Douglas production function. The data set consists of a representative sample of 625 worldwide R&D intensive firms over the period 1987–1994.

Young leading innovators and the EU's R&D intensity gap

Europes innovation gap relative to the USA is often attributed to its industrial structure in which new firms do not play a significant role, especially in high-tech sectors. This view of a structural European Union (EU) innovation deficit is popular in European innovation policy discussions, but has received little or no thorough empirical investigation. This article aims to address this ‘evidence gap’. Using industrial R&D Scoreboard data from leading world innovators, we find that compared to the USA, the EU has fewer young firms among its leading innovators. Using a decomposition analysis, we show that having fewer young firms accounts for about one-third of the EU–US differential in R&D intensity, while 55% of the differential is due to the fact that young leading innovators in the EU are less R&D intensive than their US counterparts. Further analysis shows that this is almost entirely due to a different sectoral composition. We thus confirm that the EU–US private R&D gap is indeed mostly a structural issue.

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.

Doing R&D or Not (in a Crisis), That Is the Question …

This study investigates how corporate R&D evolves in the light of the contemporary economic crisis. We study empirical evidence from past downturns, discuss the relevant literature and perform an empirical analysis of recent business survey data (collected during 2009). Pivotal for our considerations is the question whether companies tend to spend more or less on R&D and innovation activities during periods of recession. We empirically analyse what general patterns can be distinguished in this regard, given the particular circumstances of the most recent crisis. Our findings suggest that company behaviour varies: some companies have recently reduced their innovation activities significantly, while others maintained them and a third group even significantly increased their activities to reap the benefits in the expected upswing. Overall, we observe a deceleration of R&D and innovation activities induced by the crisis, but the trend figures remain positive. Driven by the companies that reinforce their R&D and innovation efforts to thrive through the downturn and thus seek to gather the benefits in the upswing to come, the R&D and innovation landscape is likely to look different in the aftermath of the crisis.

Assessing the foreign control of production of technology: The case of a small open economy

SummaryInternational R&D activities have grown significantly over the last two decades. Both the number of actors involved, as well as the importance of the technological activity carried out abroad, has considerably increased. We aim to quantify the international generation of knowledge for the case of Belgium, using indicators based on EPO and USPTO patent data (1978-2001). We distinguish among Belgian applicants, affiliates of foreign firms located in Belgium as well as Belgian based firms with affiliates abroad. This approach allows to improve existing indicators of internationalisation of technology based on patent data. The results are consistent with what can be expected for a small open economy as Belgium. A large part of patents with Belgian inventors are assigned to Belgian affiliates of foreign firms. Hence our more complete indicator of foreign ownership gives a substantially higher foreign control of Belgian inventors. Relatively more knowledge generated by Belgian inventors flows out of the country towards foreign owners of technology, than that knowledge generated abroad is owned by Belgian patent applicants. But the share of foreign inventors to Belgian assigned patents is considerably increasing over time, especially in the subcategory of Belgian firms with foreign affiliates.

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 2009 EU Survey on R&D Investment Business Trends

This report presents the findings of the sixth survey on trends in business R&D investment. These are based on 205 responses of mainly larger companies from the 1000 EU-based companies in the 2010 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. These 205 companies are responsible for R&D investment worth almost €40 billion, constituting around 30% of the total R&D investment by the 1000 EU Scoreboard companies. The main result is that top R&D investing companies in the EU expect their global R&D investments to grow by 5 % annually from 2011 to 2013. This is more than double the rate of last years expectations, and represents a significant upturn from the 2.6 % R&D investment cuts observed for these companies in 2009. Companies surveyed expect their R&D investment inside the EU to grow 3 % a year over the next three years, although this remains the lowest rate compared to what they expect to invest in R&D in other world regions, especially in Asian countries like China (25%) or India (8%), but also in the US and Canada (5%).

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’.