Knowledge Externalities Research Articles

Innovation, Productivity and Environmental Performance of Technology Spillovers Effects: Evidence from European Patents within the Triad

The aim of this paper is that of investigating whether the integration process between environmental activities is important in the Spillovers flows analysis. For this reason, we explore the role of knowledge externalities for large international firms engaged both in environmental and in non-environmental activities. In particular, we develop a theoretical framework and an empirical analysis of the United States, Japan and Europe based upon a dataset composed of worldwide R&D-intensive firms. In order to deal with the firms’ unobserved heterogeneity and the weak exogeneity of the regressors, we implement the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method. The results show a differentiated impact of environmental spillovers on firms’ productivity and green performance, by suggesting some interesting policy implications in terms of actions to favor full sustainability of firms’ production.

ENDOGENOUS RECOMBINANT GROWTH AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

We show that, even in a framework in which monopolistic exploitation of patents does not occur, patents still give rise to serious drawbacks. We rely on a recombinant growth framework that provides a stylized but clear description of the formation of knowledge externalities. In our setting a benevolent government buys immediately new patents in a competitive market and releases their contents for free. We show that inefficiencies nevertheless arise and welfare can be improved by correcting the market price through a tax–subsidy scheme. We characterize the (asymptotic) steady-state equilibrium, and some properties of the transitional path. We show that if certain conditions are met, then the economy will converge to its (asymptotic) balanced growth path, and along such a pathgrowth will be independent of the policy parameter; conversely, transition dynamics are affected by the choice of the policy parameter. We then quantitatively analyze the effect of different policy interventions on welfare, and show that stricter tax (weaker appropriability) regimes lead to higher social welfare.

Regional knowledge spillovers: a firm-based analysis of non-linear effects

ABSTRACTThis paper revisits the question of the role of knowledge externalities in firm productivity. It also addresses the overlooked issue of a plausible non-linear effect and differences among industries. Using a panel of Portuguese manufacturing firms, it finds that regional knowledge spillovers differ substantially across industries and they are non-linear, which is critical issue to promoting more assertive regional policies.

Knowledge Externalities, Economic Centralization, and Job Creation

This paper examines the effects of knowledge externalities (technology specialization and technology diversification) on job creation in European regions. The moderating effect of economic centralization on the above relation is also tested by using the measure of size of government from economic freedom index. For empirical analyses, a panel data on 203 regions in Europe from 2000 to 2012 was used. The results indicate that whereas specialization and related diversification of technology have negative effects on regional job creation, unrelated diversification of technology has a positive effect on regional job creation. This study also suggests that economic control to transform knowledge externalities into regional job creation should be decentralized in Coordinated Market Economies but centralized in Liberal Market Economies. Overall, we provide one- size-fits all solution for regional job creation by disentangling the complex interrelationships among knowledge externalities, economic centralization, and the varieties of capitalism.

Complementary Technological Knowledge Sources and Categories and Knowledge Appropriability

By applying specialized complementary assets concept to the technological portfolio of a firm, this study suggests that the combination of knowledge in certain technological categories of a firm could be an important appropriability mechanism. We analyse the US patents of large firms in electrical equipment industry between 1988 and 2006. We find that core and background technological knowledge of a firm from internal and external sources, respectively, are complementary in that the combination creates new technologies that deter inter-firm knowledge externalities but generate significant intra-firm knowledge externalities. This finding contributes to knowledge management literature, patent economics literature, and appropriability literature. Strategic implications for intellectual property right management are also discussed.

The Engines of the Creative Response: Reactivity and Knowledge Governance

The notion of endogenous innovation as the outcome of the creative response of firms to out-of-equilibrium conditions is the cornerstone of the new evolutionary complexity. This essay explores the role of the reactivity of firms to out-of-equilibrium conditions and of knowledge governance in assessing the chances that creative responses actually take place as an alternative to adaptive responses. It implements a systemic frame able to show that: i) the levels of reactivity of firms enhance the research efforts of rims that try and cope with out-of-equilibrium conditions; ii) the actual rates of introduction of innovations and increase of total factor productivity are contingent upon the quality of knowledge governance, and iii) out-of-equilibrium conditions, as well as the amount of knowledge externalities are the endogenous outcome of the creative response.

The locus of knowledge externalities and the cost of knowledge

ABSTRACTThe locus of knowledge externalities and the cost of knowledge. Regional Studies. This paper provides an extended Crépon–Duguet–Mairesse (CDM) approach to analyse jointly the simultaneous effects of knowledge spillovers in the knowledge-generation and technology production functions. It introduces the distinction between imitation and knowledge externalities and articulates the hypothesis that spillovers yield their effects via three well-distinct mechanisms: (1) knowledge externalities that exert positive and direct effects on the knowledge-production function and (2) indirect effects on the technology-production function via their effects on the cost of knowledge; and (3) imitation externalities that exert direct and positive effects on productivity in the technology-production function. We test our hypotheses on a large panel of Italian companies distributed in NUTS-2 regions for the period 2005–09. The econometric analysis consists of a model comprising a system of equations that test the simultaneous role of spillovers in the knowledge-generation and technology-production functions with the inclusion of endogenous knowledge costs. The results confirm that the access to external knowledge – as an input in the knowledge-generation function – plays a key role in increasing the knowledge output and – as an input in the technology-production function – has positive indirect and direct effects on the productivity of firms.

Knowledge exhaustibility and Schumpeterian growth

This paper accommodates the new understanding of the limited exhaustibility of knowledge into the Schumpeterian frame of the creative response to articulate a comprehensive model of Schumpeterian growth. The limited exhaustibility of knowledge and its transient appropriability favor the accumulation of a stock of quasi-public knowledge. The increasing stock of quasi-public knowledge together with appropriate knowledge governance conditions account for the secular decline of knowledge costs and the increase of diachronic and pecuniary knowledge externalities. Because of its limited exhaustibility and the consequent accumulability, knowledge is an endogenous endowment that accounts for growth. Unexpected out-of-equilibrium conditions in product and factor markets stir the response of firms. The availability of knowledge externalities accounts for the rate of innovation as they help making the reaction creative so as to enable the introduction of innovations. The search for technological congruence and the secular decline of the cost of technological knowledge accounts for its knowledge intensive direction as it induces the introduction of biased technological changes that augment the output elasticity of knowledge as an input. The limited exhaustibility of knowledge accounts for the secular trend towards the knowledge economy.

Endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change in the neoclassical growth model

The determinants of the direction of technical change and their implications for economic growth and economic policy are studied in the one-sector neoclassical growth model of Ramsey, Cass, and Koopmans extended to allow for endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change. We build on a recently developed micro-foundation for the competitive production sector that rests on the idea that the fabrication of output requires tasks to be performed by capital and labor (Irmen, 2017). Firms may engage in innovation investments that increase the productivity of capital and labor in the performance of their respective tasks. These investments are associated with new technological knowledge that accumulates over time and sustains long-run growth. We show that the equilibrium allocation is not Pareto-efficient since both forms of technical change give rise to an inter-temporal knowledge externality. An appropriate policy of investment subsidies may implement the efficient allocation.

Does FDI Bring Environmental Knowledge Spillovers to Developing Countries? The Role of the Local Industrial Structure

This paper examines the environmental knowledge externalities of FDI within and across cities in an emerging economy context. It argues that the extent of these environmental externalities is contingent upon local industrial agglomeration. Using a panel dataset of 280 Chinese prefectural cities from 2003 to 2012, we employ a spatial economic approach. Although limited to evidence from soot and hbox {SO}_{2} pollutants, our results suggest that FDI brings overall positive environmental knowledge externalities to a region, and also spillovers to nearby regions. Specialised cities may lock into a particular technological path, attenuating the absorption and diffusion of a variety of FDI environmental knowledge. Conversely, diversified cities promote cross-fertilisation of environmental knowledge and mitigate local pollution intensity at the aggregated city level. This study adds to the literature by highlighting the importance of considering both the spatiality of FDI and industrial structure in understanding FDI environmental knowledge spillovers.

Empirical Assessment of the Smart Specialization Concept on Firm Performance in European Urban and Rural Regions

This paper studies the role played by factors that are considered central to the concept of smart specialization on firm performance in a European context. The focus is on the type of spatial spillovers that occur at the firm level, which are connected to technological relatedness and knowledge externalities. The influence of such externalities is studied using firm-level data on firms located across Europe and unobserved heterogeneity and spatial dependencies are modelled by employing a multilevel model. Diverging patterns across the urban-rural range are studied by applying a regional typology. Findings indicate that measures thought to reflect smart specialization are positively associated with firm performance. It is also found that indicators of smart specialization do not affect firm performance homogenously across the studied regions.

The creative response and the endogenous dynamics of pecuniary knowledge externalities: an agent based simulation model

The paper elaborates an agent based simulation model (ABM) to explore the endogenous long-term dynamics of knowledge externalities. ABMs, as a form of artificial cliometrics, allow the analysis of the effects of the reactivity of firms caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions conditional on the levels of endogenous knowledge externalities stemming from the levels of knowledge connectivity of the system. The simulation results confirm the powerful effects of endogenous knowledge externalities. At the micro-level, the reactions of firms caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions yield successful effects in the form of productivity enhancing innovations, only in the presence of high levels of knowledge connectivity and strong pecuniary knowledge externalities. At the meso-level, the introduction of innovations changes the structural characteristics of the system in terms of knowledge connectivity that affect the availability of knowledge externalities. Endogenous centrifugal and centripetal forces continually reshape the structure of the system and its knowledge connectivity. At the macro system level, an out-of-equilibrium process leads to a step-wise increase in productivity combined with non-linear patterns of output growth characterized by significant oscillations typical of the long waves in Schumpeterian business cycles.

The Information Content of 'Big' Firms' Idiosyncratic Shocks

This paper shows that productivity shocks to the 100 largest U.S. firms (by revenue) contain systematic information. Specifically, shocks to the top-100 firms predict future shocks to geographically close firms. Intra-sector trade links are an important economic channel for spillover effects. However, these spillovers are not restricted to firms' trade links only. Knowledge externalities and state income tax payments of the top-100 firms are other economic channels through which shocks propagate. Market participants do not fully incorporate the information contained in shocks to the top-100 firms. Consequently, a portfolio analysis that exploits the slow diffusion of information generates an annual risk-adjusted return of 5.4%. Overall, the results show how productivity shocks to the few largest firms in the U.S. spillover to other firms and potentially aggregate to affect the national economy.

Knowledge externalities and production in network: game equilibria, types of nodes, network formation

We study game equilibria in a network, in each node of which an economy is described by a two-period model of endogenous growth with production and knowledge externalities. Each node obtains an externality produced by the sum of knowledge in neighbour nodes. Uniqueness of the inner equilibrium is proved. Ways of behaviour of agent (passive, active, or hyperactive) in dependence on received externalities are studied. Classification of networks based on a notion of type of node is provided. It is shown that the inner equilibrium depends not on the network's size or topology but on its structure in terms of the types of nodes, and in networks with similar types structure agents in nodes of the same type behave similarly. Changes of the equilibrium under changes in the network structure are studied, as well as network formation, in particular, connection of network components, and appearance of new links.

Knowledge externalities and production in network: game equilibria, types of nodes, network formation

Knowledge externalities and production in network: game equilibria, types of nodes, network formation

Do knowledge externalities lead to growth in economic complexity? Empirical evidence from Colombia

AbstractWe live in a complex economic system where externalities play a key role in fostering growth in complexity through increasing interdependence of interacting agents. This study tests this hypothesis for the case of Colombia. We ask whether knowledge externalities lead to growth in economic complexity. If yes, which variety of knowledge externalities—Marshall-Arrow-Romer (MAR), Porter or Jacobs? Results from our empirical investigation uphold the MAR theories of externalities or intra-industrial externalities, which are maximized with high local specialization1 and local monopoly. A pattern of convergence in economic complexity of Colombian municipalities emerges from our results, supporting Schumpeterian growth theories, which advocate that knowledge externalities drive convergence. This is in line with the recent macroeconomic trends of the Colombian economy, which is suffering from “Dutch disease” leading to a contraction in its domestic economy. We show that knowledge externalities are a mechanism through which convergence dynamics are brought about and fostered in the domestic economy.

The knowledge acquisition for innovation beyond the contract a case study in the information technology industry

The aim of this case-study based research is to discuss how a large IT multinational company envisioning external tacit knowledge, product of parties interaction in an IT strategic outsourcing, as a source of innovation generation, beyond the explicit knowledge inherent to the contract, through constructs such as knowledge exchange, spillover, externality and absorptive capacity. Therefore, the objective in this exploratory research is to analyze the knowledge exchange and acquisition above the formal information forecasted in the contract between the parties. In order to reach this goal, it was used a qualitative methodology with interviews and open-ended questions, in the company sales department. As a methodology section annex was shown a Table with main constructs, authors and papers. Also it was presented in the Annex a Topic Outline as a way to operationalize the main theoretical concepts and propositions converting them into practical elements and as a guideline for development of the open-ended questions utilized in the interviews. As initial findings we could see that the company sales area is able to acquire additional knowledge beyond the contract with their clients and apply it internally and other clients, resulting as an outcome of process innovation, potentially due to knowledge spillover, externality and knowledge database change, as component of the absorptive capacity. It was captured some company formal mechanisms to stimulate the client facing area to acquire and reuse the knowledge. On the other hand, sometimes the knowledge sharing is individual initiative.

Firms’ knowledge search and local knowledge externalities in innovation performance

We use an augmented version of the UK Innovation Surveys 4–7 to explore firm-level and local area openness externalities on firms’ innovation performance. We find strong evidence of the value of external knowledge acquisition both through interactive collaboration and non-interactive contacts such as demonstration effects, copying or reverse engineering. Levels of knowledge search activity remain well below the private optimum, however, due perhaps to informational market failures. We also find strong positive externalities of openness resulting from the intensity of local interactive knowledge search—a knowledge diffusion effect. However, there are strong negative externalities resulting from the intensity of local non-interactive knowledge search—a competition effect. Our results provide support for local initiatives to support innovation partnering and counter illegal copying or counterfeiting. We find no significant relationship between either local labour quality or employment composition and innovative outputs.

Why are researchers paid bonuses? On technology spillovers and market rivalry

A temporary change in pay to employed inventors around the time of patent application has been documented. A theoretical model is here developed to provide an explanation to said findings based on the idea that inventors may be able to use the knowledge previously generated while working in a firm, in a rival company. The model features firms who hire workers in R&D functions to make product innovations. The innovation process consists of distinct phases each with different access to information about the innovation value for firms. Firms compete to attract workers, and workers can transfer part of the generated new knowledge to a new employer. Results suggest that the capital intensity of R&D investments, and the type and size of knowledge spillovers, may affect the probability to observe bonus pay at the time of a patent application.Different tax incentives and subsidies are then studied as a means to correct for possible under-investment of capital. We study the effect of a patent box, a subsidy to R&D capital investments, and a subsidy to bonus pay. When market rivalry prevails over positive knowledge externalities, a bonus pay incentive was found to obtain the social first-best while a patent box or a subsidy to capital investment would cause overinvestment. When positive knowledge externalities prevail, either a patent box or a subsidy to capital investment obtain the social optimal level of capital investments.

Knowledge composition, Jacobs externalities and innovation performance in European regions

ABSTRACTKnowledge composition, Jacobs externalities and innovation performance in European regions. Regional Studies. This paper analyses the role of the composition of the regional stock of knowledge in explaining innovation performance. It provides three main contributions. First, it investigates the relevance of Jacobs knowledge externalities in characterizing the technological capabilities at the regional level. Second, it applies the Hidalgo–Hausmann (HH) methodology to analyze knowledge composition by looking at patent data of 214 regions, located in 27 state members of the European Union during the years 1994–2008. Third, it econometrically assesses the role of knowledge base composition in a knowledge-generation function. The results of the empirical analysis confirm that the characterization of the regional knowledge base through the HH indicators provides interesting information to understanding its composition and to qualify it as a provider of the Jacobs knowledge externalities that account for the dynamics of regional innovative performance.