Assessing the Effects of International Trade on Private R&D Expenditures in the Food Processing Sector

This study empirically investigates the effects of imports and exports on private research and development (R&D) expenditures in the food processing sector. An analytical framework discussing the various effects of international trade on R&D activities is presented. This is followed by an empirical analysis that uses a dynamic empirical specification for current R&D expenditures and for a cumulative measure of R&D stock. The empirical investigation is applied to a panel dataset covering Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's countries. The empirical results show that increases in import intensity levels induce reductions in private R&D expenditures whereas increases in export intensity levels promote larger private R&D expenditures. These outcomes imply that the R&D-enhancing effects of exports are countered by the R&D-reducing effects of imports.     

How to interpret the position of private sector institutions in bibliometric rankings of research institutions

This paper analyzes the positions of institutions from the private domain in bibliometric rankings of as many as 27,000 research institutions and highlights factors that are crucial for a proper interpretation of such positions. It was found that among the institutions with the largest output in terms of published research articles, private firms are underrepresented, whereas in the top quartile of institutions with the largest citation impact firms are overrepresented. A firm’s publication output is not a good indicator of its R&D investment: big firms in Pharmaceutics are both heavy investors in R&D and frequent publishers of scientific articles, whereas in Automobiles firms tend to invest heavily in R&D but their publication output is low. This is ascribed to the fact that the former need a validation of their results by the scientific community, while the latter do less so. Private institutions generating the largest citation impact tend to collaborate with the best public research institutions. This reflects the crucial importance of publicly funded research for the private sector.     

Increasing the return on investment from federally-funded research and development

Abstract

Each year, the United States invests approximately $495 billion in research and development (R&D) – about a quarter of the total global investment. While the private sector accounts for about 67% of U.S. investment, the Federal government plays a critical role in funding R&D, particularly in areas that address societal needs in which the private sector does not yet have sufficient clear or strong incentive to make the required investments. The Federal government invests approximately $150 billion each year in R&D conducted at Federal laboratories, universities and other research organizations. As Federal R&D investments wind down or are completed, additional work is often still needed to translate the knowledge accrued from that R&D into products and services that will improve lives and provide economic growth. Technology transfer is the process by which existing knowledge, facilities or capabilities developed through R&D are utilised to fulfill public and private need. The transfer of technology from federally-funded R&D to the private sector is crucial to realising the taxpayer’s return on investment in the Federal R&D ecosystem. However, moving innovations from the lab to the market is more than inventing products for people to buy. Technology transfer is about creating jobs and growing the economy; ensuring a strong, secure, and resilient Nation; and improving Americans’ health and environment, fostering the conditions for America to maintain leadership in global innovation.     

Assessing coreness and intermediarity of technology sectors using patent co-classification analysis: the case of Korean national R&D

Rapid technological advancements and increasing research and development (R&D) costs are making it necessary for national R&D plans to identify the coreness and intermediarity of technologies in selecting projects and allocating budgets. Studies on the coreness or intermediarity of technology sectors have used patent citations, but there are limitations to dealing with patent data. The limitations arise from the most current patents and patents that do not require citations, e.g. Korean patents. Further, few or no studies have simultaneously considered both coreness and intermediarity. Therefore, we propose a patent co-classification based method to measure coreness and intermediarity of technology sectors by incorporating the analytic network process and the social network analysis. Using IPC co-classifications of patents as technological knowledge flows, this method constructs a network of directed knowledge flows among technology sectors and measures the long-term importance and the intermediating potential of each technology sector, despite the limitations of patent-based analyses. Considering both coreness and intermediarity, this method can provide more detailed and essential knowledge for decision making in planning national R&D. We demonstrated this method using Korean national R&D patents from 2008 to 2011. We expect that this method will help in planning national R&D in a rapidly evolving technological environment.     

Sponsored R&D in India: The project sponsoring pattern and main outcome of projects sponsored by major central departments/agencies

This paper examines the project sponsoring pattern and the outcome of extramural R&D with respect to the projects sponsored by country's eleven central agencies during the Seventh Five-Year Plan period. The outcome considered are: contribution of R&D support to development of R&D facilities at the recipient institutions, creation of employment through project posts, development of new technologies, quantum and quality of research publications and generation of doctoral thesis. The paper concludes that sponsored R&D has largely remained one-way flow of funds to a preferred set of institutions (as perceived by each sponsoring agency) and the outcome of the R&D have also remained unexamined by the respective funding agencies. The paper advocates development of a monitoring system which would help in enhancing the utilisation of sponsored R&D and its overall impact on science, society and economy.     

Firm size and compositions of R&D expenditures: evidence from a panel of R&D performing manufacturing firms

The effect of firm size on diverse compositions of R&D expenditures is analysed in detail using firm-level data on the Korean manufacturing sector. On the grounds that each type of R&D activity differs in terms of salability in disembodied form and growth potential due to innovation, a distinction between product vs. process, and new vs. incremental R&D is made. Empirical tests show that the firm size is significantly associated with both the new and incremental R&D. Moreover, firm size is found to be significantly associated with other types of R&D compositions such as the share of R&D devoted to incremental innovation and multidimensional combinations of product, process, new and incremental R&D. These findings support the idea that large firms possess innovative advantages over smaller firms and firm size is an important determinant for firms’ heterogeneous R&D activities. We also discuss the limitations and the implications of the findings.     

R&D and eco-innovation: opportunities for closer collaboration between universities and companies through technology centers

It is widely accepted that eco-innovation is the direction to make progress towards a sustainable innovation. Public and private actors seem to share a common point of view and agreement on the benefits of implementing eco-innovation. If this is the case, why eco-innovative activities are still exceptional and exemplary instead of being the usual reasoning and inspiring driver for all kind of actions? Going in depth into the reasons why eco-innovation techniques are not broadly spread, the main one is the lack of internalization of this attitude in all the everyday actions taken by companies and employees in the form of social responsibility. Definitively, society as a whole is responsible for the eco-innovation promotion. Large companies have long ago incorporated Social Responsibility into their strategic planning and invest on innovation as a competitive advantage. However, they are reluctant to contribute to the eco-innovation. Therefore, universities and technology centers (TCs) have to play this role and link the private sector, specially medium, and small size companies, with the society needs. However, Universities are not often leading the eco-innovation initiative. Currently, in the case of Spain, it is observed a huge gap between the scientific research efforts made by the Public University and the academic offering and the real needs of the private companies. In fact, mixed structures as TCs are needed in order to overcome this disconnection, increasing opportunities for subsequent cooperation in eco-innovation projects. This paper points out the causes of the Spanish R&D and innovation lag, and highlights the reasons of the disconnection between public and private research for innovation, while giving hints on what is working fine and what needs to be reviewed to catch up with the R&D reference countries in Europe.     

Science, technology and industrial development in India

India in its 40 years of independence has made great progress in science and technology and in industrial development. Education at all levels has expanded, and the number of colleges and universities has increased several-fold. Expenditures for research and development (R&D) have grown rapidly, with 85% of its support coming from government agencies. The four largest government programs for R&D are for Defense, Agriculture, Atomic Energy, and Space, and these four account for over 50% of the nation's R&D efforts. Under government encouragement, R&D by private industry has expanded rapidly, and now about equals the public sector industry in R&D expenditures. Industrial concerns, public and private, directly support about 30% of India's R&D.The impact of indegenous R&D on India's industry is growing, but both the public and private sectors of industry still rely principally on imported technologies. However, several new government “liberalisation” programs, aimed at enhancing the contributions of Indian research, for example by making it simpler and less costly to import research equipment, are now in place, and should expand India's research efforts, and their contributions to industry.     

Major factors affecting cross-city R&D collaborations in China: evidence from cross-sectional co-patent data between 224 cities

Scientific research activities cluster in cities or towns. Modern cities can play a crucial role in the national or regional innovation system. Strengthening R&D collaboration between cities can contribute to perfectly integrating various regional innovation systems. Using the cross-sectional co-patent data of the Chinese Patent Database as a proxy for R&D collaboration, this paper investigates the spatial patterns of R&D collaborations between 224 Chinese cities and the major factors that affect cross-city R&D collaborations in China. A spatial interaction model was used to examine how spatial, economic, technological and political factors affect cross-city R&D collaborations. The degree of centrality shows that cross-city collaborative R&D activities mainly occur in favored regions, advanced municipalities and coastal regions. The mean collaboration intensity for intra-provincial cross-city collaborations is 4.74; however, for inter-provincial collaborations, it is 0.69. The econometric findings reveal that spatial, economic, technological and political bias factors do yield significant influences on the frequency of cross-city R&D collaboration. Specifically, as evidenced by the model coefficient, it is more likely that R&D collaborations occur among cities that are connected by high-speed railways.     

Principal parameters affecting R&D exploitation of nanotechnology research: a case for Korea

The purpose of this study is to determine principal parameters which affect the R&D exploitation and to explore R&D activities in closed science that positively affect those in open science. Based on 486 nanotechnology projects from five national R&D programs in South Korea, canonical correlation analysis is used to analyze the relationships among R&D parameters of inputs, outputs and outcomes and to determine principle parameters. As a result, this study concludes that the principal parameters are publications with high impact, patents, and academic degrees. This study also shows a positive correlation between activities in open science and closed science. The conclusions suggest that research results with high impact value should be endorsed by the Korean government and should try to keep a balance between R&D exploitation in open science and closed science. This study would be used for establishing South Korea’s R&D policy effective for faster commercialization of nanotechnology related research.     

Exploring the effect of dual use on the value of military technology patents based on the renewal decision

Concerns regarding the high level of research and development (R&D) expenditure on military technology have prompted many nations to pursue a dual-use regime in military R&D. However, the value of dual-use military technology has not yet been quantitatively investigated. We explore whether military technology with a higher level of duality has been more valuable than that with a lower level of duality. We assume that the patent of valuable military technology was renewed until its termination. We retrieve military patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office during 1976–2014 based on their International Patent Classification (IPC) as F41 or F42. Then, we propose three indicators to assess the duality level of them. The first indicator is based on the determination of whether the patented technology is utilizable in both the military and the civilian sectors using its IPC. For the second indicator, we estimate the potential of convergence of a patented technology with various technological fields using the degree of centrality of the IPC’s co-occurrence network. The third indicator is based on ratio of forward citation by the civilian sector over the total number of forward citations as a measurement of technology diffusion toward the civilian sector. Using logistic regression, we found that the first two indicators are positively associated with patent renewal decision, while the last indicator is nonsignificant. The effects of the two significant indicators suggests that military technologies are more valuable when the technology itself can be used in various sectors, including the civilian sector, and can be converged with technologies in different fields. However, the nonsignificant influence of the third variable suggests that the relation between patent value and diffusion effects toward following inventions is not confined to the civilian sector. Our findings provide evidence of the impact of dual-use policies in military R&D.     

Induced technological change and the timing of public R&D investment in the Japanese electricity sector considering a two-factor learning curve

The UNFCCC has stated that energy policies and measures to address climate change should be cost-effective to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. To mitigate the bulk of carbon emission from the electricity sector, a large market penetration of renewable energy technologies with as low cost as possible is a key research topic. The energy-related R&D policy in Japan aims to achieve a green economy. In our study, based on this context, we demonstrated how to optimize the timing of public R&D investment within the framework of a bottom-up partial equilibrium model. The developed optimization model represents the Japanese electricity sector and minimizes the total system cost subject to an accumulated carbon emission constraint. Our main research focus is the role of R&D activity, especially in the innovation stage of renewable technologies. We employ a two-factor learning curve and quantify the impact of the learning effect on the dynamic diffusion of major renewable technologies. The study shows a dynamic technology transition in the Japanese electricity sector and the optimized R&D investment schedule for each renewable technology. With the first-best energy policy, an R&D budget of more than 2000 million USD would be allocated to PV in 2050, which corresponds to 45% of the energy-related Japanese R&D budget in 2050. Because some have criticized the uncertainty problems with dynamic simulations and learning models, supplemental sensitivity analyses are included.     

Top management team’s innovation-related characteristics and the firm’s explorative R&D: an analysis based on patent data

This study investigates the relationship between characteristics of the firm’s top management team (TMT) and its research and development (R&D) activities. Specifically, this research analyzes how observable characteristics of the TMT, such as functional experiences or educational background, and average tenure affect the firm’s proportion of explorative R&D activities. From the perspective of the upper-echelon theory, we hypothesize that the TMT’s functional experiences with R&D or science or engineering educational backgrounds increase the firm’s tendency towards explorative R&D. Moreover, we propose that the average tenure of TMT members with innovation-related experiences would have a positive moderation effects on these relationships. The hypotheses are tested using a dataset containing biographical information of the TMT members, financial, and patent data of 89 firms in U.S. high-tech industries from 2006 to 2009. Firm’s explorative R&D activities are analyzed using data on patent citations, patent classes, and non-patent references. The empirical analysis shows that the top managers’ educational background in science or engineering as well as their previous functional experiences with R&D have a positive effect on the firm’s explorative innovation activities. We also find that the size of these effects increases with a longer tenure of these TMT members. Our findings provide implications related to the effects of organizational characteristics on the establishment of a R&D strategy and highlight the role of TMT members with innovative experiences in directing a firm’s R&D activities and outcomes.     

An international comparison of relative contributions to academic productivity

This paper presents a methodology for measuring the improvements in efficiency and adjustments in the scale of R&D (Research & Development) activities. For this purpose, this study decomposes academic productivity growth into components attributable to (1) world academic frontier change, (2) R&D efficiency change, (3) human capital accumulation, and (4) capital accumulation. The world academic frontier at each point in time is constructed using data envelopment analysis (DEA). This study calculates each of the above four components of academic productivity for 27 countries over 1990–2003, and finds that the components which contribute to academic productivity growth vary with the different countries’ characteristics and development stages. Human capital has more weight in terms of the quantity of academic research, and capital accumulation plays a more important role in the citation impact of academic research.     

The effects and time lags of R&D spillovers in Brazil

Government's innovation investments for science intensive sectors, such as the capital goods industry for developing countries play an important role in technology dissemination; however, few studies have addressed this issue. This study is conducted in the framework of a developing economy (Brazil), and aims to estimate the spillover effects throughout the industry resulting from public investment in innovation, as well as the spillovers of R&D and management investment performed by the capital goods industry through the rest of the industrial sector, and also the time lapse between the occurrence of innovative investment and output growth due to such expenditures. The results of the estimated econometric model exhibit significant and positive spillover effects by the government R&D expenditures for the capital goods industry with a three-year lapse, as well as a one-year lag for the occurrence of output effects on the other companies of the manufacturing sector, resulting from innovative investments by the capital goods industry.     

Offshoring and Improvisational Learning: Empirical Insights into Developing Global R&D Capabilities

This study examines how global research and development (R&D) capabilities develop through improvisational learning. Using empirical insights from two large Swedish multinational companies and their early learning from establishing a captive R&D offshore unit in Bangalore, India, we use multicase inductive analysis to identify how companies cope with challenge related to coordinating R&D across geographically dispersed units through improvisational learning. Using a cooperative stage model analysis, we explain how improvisational learning occurs during the setup, start-up and ongoing stages of establishing captive R&D offshoring operations. We find that improvisational actions lead to developing routines as a response to solving unexpected coordination challenges and help explain how global R&D capabilities develop.     

Linking R&D with production in the third world

Developing countries see science and technology as keys to their modernization. In both agricultural and industrial production, however, science and technology often do not seem to be linked effectively with the needs of the productive organizations. A United Nations Panel recently considered this subject. The principal choices turn on designing and managing R&D programs, building the crucial communications channels among technical staffs in R&D vis-a-vis users and producers, establishing incentives in the country's overall economic pattern, and analyzing the roles of the public and private sectors.     

Direct and indirect knowledge spillovers and industrial productivity

This paper analyses the importance of externalities related to the spread of innovation across sectors. Such spillover effects arise from R&D activities and input–output (IO) linkages among sectors in the country. We borrow Spatial Econometrics techniques to make consistent estimates of the impact of these systematic direct and indirect spillovers on sector’s productivity and the possibility of other types of productivity spillovers in the error term. We find that direct spillovers emanating from IO horizontal linkages determine sector’s productivity, while the indirect effects prove to be negligible. Furthermore, the technological intensity of IO linkages and the productive structure of the underlying economy are key factors determining the effectiveness of economic policies focused on increasing total industrial productivity.     

Industry evolution and key technologies in China based on patent analysis

Patents are the manifestation of the industry’s research and development (R&D) endeavor; therefore, this paper studies the industry evolution of and key technologies in China from the perspective of patent analysis. Patents in six types of industries, including Chemical (excluding Drugs), Computers and Communications, Drugs and Medical, Electrical and Electronics (E&E), Mechanical, and Others are analyzed in this study. Findings from the analysis show a steady increase of US granted utility patents in China as well as percentage of these patents in the world over the period between 2003 and 2008. All the above industries in China have been growing rapidly during this period, which is very different from the global industry development. Despite the rapid development, the citation rates of these patents have been low, reflecting a need for improvement in the quality of patents and R&D performance for these six industries in China in order to exert more influence in the industry world. The analysis on patents also reveals China’s industry distribution to be similar to the global industry distribution, with the exception of E&E industry which weights over one third of the total patents in technologies. The E&E industry is also the field with largest economic growth which rises more rapidly after 2006 with a sudden increase of patents in USPC 361. Detailed tracking of the key technology evolution reveals that 90% of the newly issued patents in USPC 361 after 2006 are owned by Foxconn Technology Co., Ltd, pointing to an unbalanced R&D environment in China’s E&E industry sector. By providing the insight into the evolution of China’s industrial and technological development through the perspective of patent analysis, this paper hopes to provide an objective statistic reference for future policy directions and academic researches.     

Diversity of research publications: relation to agricultural productivity and possible implications for STI policy

Technologies may have significant effects on productivity in the agricultural sector as documented in the related literature. However, those impacts vary from country to country. These differences could partially reflect the distinct scientific landscapes, science technology and innovation (STI) policies and approaches to R&D. In order to explain the cross-country volatility of agricultural productivity, we aim to study issues of STI development in the agricultural sector in each country. Among other characteristics of STI in general and the scientific landscape, in particular, we looked at the diversification of research publication between subfields of agricultural science. We estimated the research diversification parameter and studied its relation to economic performance of an agricultural sector. Our main finding shows that R&D funding, if carefully balanced with the diversification of agricultural science, could improve research performance and eventually productivity in an agricultural sector.