Capability accumulation and product innovation: an agent-based perspective

Abstract

This paper studiesthe relevance of productheterogeneity and relatedness for the accumulation ofcapabilities in firms, as well as their implications for innovation dynamics. The existing literature has produced extensive evidence on the relevance of capability accumulation for innovation processes. Yet, an assessment of prior attempts to model these processes indicates that when it comes to the final consumption good sector, the evolutionary macroeconomic literature has focused on process rather than product innovation. To facilitate the consideration of empirical and microeconomic insights on product innovation in these models, this paper introduces a simple agent-based model, which may later serve as an innovation module in macroeconomic models. In the model, firms accumulate capabilities to produce final consumption goods that are heterogeneous in terms of their complexity and differ in their relatedness to each other. The model is used to study theoretical implications of different topological structures underlying product relatedness by conducting simulations with different ‘product spaces’. The analysis suggests that the topological structure of the product space, the assumed relationship between product complexity and centrality, as well as the relevance of product complexity in price setting dynamics have significant but nontrivial implications and deserve further attention in evolutionary macroeconomics.