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Choosing among alternative technological strategies: an empirical analysis of formal sources of innovation

Abstract This work aims to offer a detailed conceptual and empirical analysis of the inter-firm differences in deciding the composition of their technological efforts. Using data for Spanish firms in the period 1990–1996, the study begins with the standard analysis of the determinants of innovative investment, then moves on to the less analysed question of the determinants of the generate versus import alternative and ends with a novel analysis of the characteristics which lead firms to organise research internally as compared to the possibility of contracting R&D services externally. In contrast to standard practice, the econometric approach takes into account the existence of non-linearities in the used data. The results obtained support the conceptual ideas on which they are based.

Determinants of the demand for education in Spain

The aim of this paper is to estimate an equation for household demand for both secondary and university education, using an estimation of the opportunity cost associated with the decision to invest in education. Limited dependent variable models are applied to the data provided by the Family Budget Survey 1991 for Spain. The results show that the social and economic status of the family has a comparatively greater impact on household expenditure on secondary education than on university education. The opportunity cost is also shown to be a decisive variable in the decision to invest in secondary education, although the results are less conclusive in the case of university education.

A complete system of Engel curves in the Spanish economy

The main goal of this article is the estimation of the consumption–income relationship along with socio–economic factors using cross section data from the Spanish Household Expenditure Survey 1991. The data has been grouped according to exogenous criteria to avoid the problem of null expenditure. First, a non–linear system of equation is estimated, from which the linear form that best fits the used data is tested. Finally, income elasticities are calculated considering three alternative formulations depending on how an initial income increment is distributed among consumers. Income elasticities are shown for the whole income distribution

Technological patterns among Spanish manufacturing firms

The present work is orientated towards the study of the configuration of the innovating processes of Spanish firms. Using recently available data from a panel of manufacturing firms, a detailed descriptive analysis is carried out with the objective of providing an overall view of the main characteristics of the firms and the market structure in which they evolve. This, in turn, becomes an intermediate step for the establishment of a taxonomy of cases that underlies the concept of technological regime. Firms that report R&D expenditures as well as those that do not are taken into consideration when composing the classification of firms. This feature distinguishes the present work from others which have departed from the subset of innovating firms, thus rendering R&D (or other indicators of formal innovation activities) an obligatory ingredient on the technological strategies chosen by firms. The clusters obtained differentiate from each other mainly because of the level, composition and permanence of investment in formal innovation activities, as well as because of the different rates of innovation success and their protection by means of industrial property. The different technological strategies corresponding to the different clusters are also found to be associated with locational determinants.

Patents, competition, and firms' innovation incentives

This paper presents fresh evidence on the interaction between industrial property rights (patents) and competition, and their joint effect on firms’ innovation. We use panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990–2006, as well as external information on European Patent Office and US Patent Office patent counts. We construct a new synthetic measure of competition and estimate the impact of patents on this measure at the industry level. Then, the effect of industry-wide competition and patenting on firms’ innovation is estimated at the firm level. Our results suggest that patents reduce the level of competition in the industry, whereas the effect of competition on innovation varies with the type of innovation indicator. Thus, by lowering competition, patents in an industry exert an indirect effect on innovation besides their direct effect. In addition, interaction effects between patents and competition indicate that patents soften the impact of competition changes on firms’ innovation.

Foreign capital, credit constraints and continuity of firms’ R&D

ABSTRACT In this article, we investigate the role of foreign capital participation as a means for firms to overcome the obstacle posed by credit constraints to sustain R&D investments. Using data for Spanish manufacturing firms in the period 1990–2006, we show that firms with foreign capital are significantly less likely to stop already initiated R&D projects and also more likely to sustain R&D investment when facing credit constraints. Our results are robust to positive selection into foreign capital participation, which we control through a set of variables chosen from a propensity score estimation, and to firms’ fixed-effects.