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.     

Research,development and growth in state-owned enterprises: empirical evidence from Ecuador

ABSTRACT

Investment in R&D is essential for the survival and growth of organizations. Recent literature has focused on the study of effects of R&D on the growth of private companies. However, there is no research studying the effects of R&D on the growth of Latin American public companies. This paper estimates, using an endogenous growth model, the effect of investments in R&D on sales growth in public enterprises of Ecuador. Data corresponding to a sample of 86 public companies have been taken from the Survey of Activities of Science and Technology (ACTI) of Ecuador for the period 2012 to 2014. These data are estimated by OLS. The results show that there is a statistically significant positive relation between investment in research and development and the growth of sales in public companies.     

Relations between national research investment and publication output: Application to an American Paradox

The term “European Paradox” describes the perceived failure of the EU to capture full benefits of its leadership of science as measured by publications and some other indicators. This paper investigates what might be called the “American Paradox,” the decline in scientific publication share of the U.S. despite world-leading investments in research and development (R&D) — particularly as that decline has accelerated in recent years. A multiple linear regression analysis was made of which inputs to the scientific enterprise are most strongly correlated with the number of scientific papers produced. Research investment was found to be much more significant than labor input, government investment in R&D was much more significant than that by industry, and government non-defense investment was somewhat more significant than its defense investment. Since the EU actually leads the U.S. in this key component, this could account for gradual loss of U.S. paper share and EU assumption of leadership of scientific publication in the mid-1990s. More recently the loss of U.S. share has accelerated, and three approaches analyzed this phenomenon: (1) A companion paper shows that the SCI database has not significantly changed to be less favorable to the U.S.; thus the decline is real and is not an artifact of the measurement methods. (2) Budgets of individual U.S. research agencies were correlated with overall paper production and with papers in their disciplines. Funding for the U.S. government civilian, non-healthcare sector was flat in the last ten years, resulting in declining share of papers. Funding for its healthcare sector sharply increased, but there were few additional U.S. healthcare papers. While this inefficiency contributes to loss of U.S. share, it is merely a specific example of the general syndrome that increased American investments have not produced increased publication output. (3) In fact the decline in publication share appears to be due to rapidly increasing R&D investments by China, Taiwan, S. Korea, and Singapore. A model shows that in recent years it is a country’s share of world investment that is most predictive of its publication share. While the U.S. has increased its huge R&D investment, its investment share still declined because of even more rapidly increasing investments by these Asian countries. This has likely led to their sharply increased share of scientific publication, which must result in declines of shars of others — the U.S. and more recently, the EU.     

Regional R&D activities and interactions in the Swedish Triple Helix

The Swedish innovation system is analysed in terms of the interaction between academia, government and the private sector. For each of 21 Swedish regions we analyse the distribution of research activities, doctoral employment, and publication output, as well as the flow of doctoral graduates and the distribution of co-authorship links across regions and sectors. The three main urban regions have about 75 percent of all R&D activities and outputs. They also have a more balanced supply of academic, governmental and private research activities than the smaller regions, and the interactions among sectors within these regions are more intense. The inter-regional flow of PhDs is also to the advantage of the big regions. So far, decentralization of the academic sector does not seem to have had as similar decentralizing effect on private R&D. Unless this imbalance changes, smaller regions will continue to be net exporters of skill and knowledge to the big regions.     

Patent evolution in relation to public/private R&D investment and corporate profitability: Evidence from the United States

Summary In this paper we analyze the (historical) co-evolution of technological development and economic progress (by relating public and private R&D investment, patenting, and corporate profitability). We relate to the work ofSchmookler(1966),Griliches(1990),Pakes&Griliches(1980) andPakes(1986) who all have studied the techno-economic interplay by considering patents as in indicator of technological performance. We use United States industry and government data over the period 1953-1998 (45 years). Co-evolution analysis over this period reveals a strong interdependency among the variables. Patent evolution is strongly related to the development of private R&D and corporate profitability; the levels of public and private R&D expenditure in combination with the level of technological output (i.e. patents) have a strong predictive and explanatory power towards corporate profitability (R² value of 94.9%). Causality tests reveal a joint determination between R&D investment and corporate profitability (L=2; p<0.01).     

Comparison of technology transfer from government labs in the US and Vietnam

Technology transfer from the government sector to industry has emerged as an important activity in developed and developing countries as governments are increasing their funding for the national innovation systems with an objective of developing technologies which will improve and enhance the country’s national competitiveness. However, this endeavor requires good technology transfer practices from the government R&D facilities to industry. Developed countries have embarked on this process for the past two decades and have gained some success, but further improvements are still needed. This paper compares the status of government technology transfer in a developed country, the US, and that in a developing country, Vietnam.     

Induced technological change and the timing of public R&amp;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.     

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.     

R&;D market value under weak intellectual property rights protection: the case of India

The relationship between R&D and market value has attracted the interest of many scholars within different fields, but scant attention has been paid to the countries with weak protection of intellectual property rights (IPR). This is unfortunate, since this problem is potentially highly relevant for IPR policy in developing countries. In particular, several questions arise when the problem of R&D market value is analyzed in a country where IPR protection is weak. First, there are concerns regarding incentives (i.e., private returns) for firms to invest in R&D when IPR is only weakly protected. Second, significant differences could emerge in the market valuation of R&D investments of domestic and foreign firms, above all in those industries where spillovers are more likely. To examine these issues, this paper investigates the market valuation of R&D investments of a panel of 219 R&D-reporting domestic and foreign firms publicly traded in India with an empirical analysis. First, the market valuation of the R&D capital for the whole sample is positive and higher than those obtained in U.S. or European countries from similar analyses. Second, in the sub-samples of the domestic and foreign firms, the market value of R&D investments of foreign firms is not significantly different from zero, while the valuation coefficient of domestic firms is four times higher than that obtained on the whole sample. Third, in science-based industries the difference between domestic and foreign firms is smaller than in the other industries. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

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.     

Fusion of technology management and financing management - Amazon's transformative endeavor by orchestrating techno-financing systems

Amazon became the world R&D leader in 2017 by rapidly increasing R&D investment. Its R&D investment in 2017 was double that of 2015, 5 times that of 2012, and 10 times that of 2011. This rapid increase continued in 2018, and Amazon accomplished a skyrocketing increase in its market capitalization, closing to being the world's biggest company.Such a rapid increase in R&D and subsequent market value has raised questions about how to conduct R&D and secure a large amount of funds needed for high-risk investments. Amazon has provided hypothetical answers to both of these questions.Amazon has been conducting innovative R&D to transform routine or periodic alterations into significant improvements during the R&D process and claiming huge expenses for such transformation activities as expenses for R&D.The company's ample free cash flow generated by sophisticated cash conversion cycle (CCC) management endorsed a large amount of investment for such a high-risk strategy.Increased R&D induced business advancement and lean cost structure construction leading to a further increase in cash flow has stimulated interactions between vendors, customers, and Amazon via the Amazon marketplace. Activated interaction-accelerated CCC advancement, a subsequent free cash flow increase, and user-driven innovation have thus simultaneously accelerated R&D transformation.All of these components - R&D transformation and technopreneurial strategy consisting of technology management, as well as marketplace development and CCC-driven cash flow generation consisting of financing management - function together as a consolidated sophisticated machine. Thus, Amazon has succeeded in fusing technology management and financing management by orchestrating all techno-financing systems.In light of increasing concerns regarding R&D expansion without the dilemma of a productivity decline that most digital economies are now confronting, this paper demonstrates the above hypothetical answers.Following the authors' preceding analysis of Amazon's unique technology management toward a new concept of R&D in the digital economy, an intensive empirical analysis focusing on the development trajectory of Amazon's techno-financing system over the last two decades was conducted.An insightful suggestion as to neo-open innovation that fuses technology management and financing management is thus provided.     

Optimal R&D investments of the firm

This paper examines irreversible decisions on innovative activities where it takes time to complete an R&D project. The total amount of R&D investments that the firm needs to undertake in order to obtain the breakthrough in the innovation process is uncertain. R&D investments are limited by the restriction that they must be self-financed. It is shown that R&D investments are more valuable when the level of uncertainty is large. Especially, it is very attractive to undertake R&D investments if a project faces many uncertainties during its early phases. Furthermore we study how R&D behavior is influenced by different levels of the discount rate and the financing limit. Moreover, the effects of R&D subsidies, spillover benefits and a payoff that decreases over time are analyzed. Received: 9 October 1997 / Accepted: 19 March 1998     

Effective R&amp;D investment planning based on technology spillovers: the case of Korea

This study was performed to discuss an R&D investment planning method based on the technology spillover among R&D fields, from the point of view of technology convergence. The empirical analysis focused on a particular R&D group, such as university departments and specialized research institutes, since local technology combinations are more effective than distant combinations to create a new technology, according to previous research. In addition, worldwide technology competition is increasing, and with the recent convergence of various technologies and industries, strategies for R&D selection and resources allocation of particular R&D groups are becoming increasingly important. The empirical analysis uses a modified Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method combined with information on patent citations to resolve the latent problems of the existing model, using as an empirical example the case of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM), specialized in the geology and resources development R&D area. Through the empirical analysis, the KIGAM’s current R&D investment status is considered, and a reasonable R&D investment planning is suggested from the perspective of technology spillover. By using this framework, the magnitude of technology spillover from the R&D investment planning within a particular R&D group can be measured based on objective quantitative data, and the current R&D investment can be compared with recent global trends.     

Scientific productivity paradox: The case of China's S&T system

Summary In 1985 China began the reform of its Science & Technology (S&T) sector inherited from the planned economy. To disclose the impact of the drawn-out reform on the efficiency of the whole sector, we measure the scientific productivity of China's S&T institutes. The analysis is based on R&D input and output data at the country aggregate and provincial level. We utilize Polynomial Distributed Lag model to uncover the structure of the lag between R&D input and output. The findings reveal that the growth rate of scientific productivity of China's S&T institutes has been negative since the 1990s.     

The effects of R&D subsidies and network embeddedness on R&D output: evidence from the German biotech industry

Although policy makers subsidize firms’ R&D projects to increase innovational output in an industry, region, or country, it remains unclear whether such subsidization triggers additional R&D efforts or crowds out private investments. To address this question, we assess the effectiveness of subsidization for individual and collaborative research in the German biotech industry while also examining the relevance of network embeddedness for patent output. Our results indicate that subsidies do lead to increased patent output, with additional benefits from involvement in more than one project. However, the amount of money is only significant under certain circumstances. Also, it is higher degree centrality in the firm network that significantly increases R&D success.     

The evolution of excellence: Policies, paradigms, and practices shaping US research and development

An ongoing interest in the history of US technological advancement exists due to its influence on US economic growth, productivity, and international competitiveness. Federal government policy and investments have fostered a collaborative culture between the main supporters and performers of US research and development: the government, academia, and industry. At present, a full two-thirds of our nation's research and development spending comes from the private sector, and research and development is closely linked to the marketplace. The US government tracks key international science and technology metrics in order to inform its priority-setting process. The latest trends indicate that a broad expansion of science and technology capabilities is underway in many countries, both policy- and market-driven. In today's economic landscape, the US is confronting a host of new challenges on the global scientific and economic competitive fronts.     

The role of government-industry-academia partnership in business incubation: Evidence from new R&D institutions in China

it is very important to encourage the incubation of new companies for innovative economic growth. Many countries in the world are encouraging “innovation orchards” in the form of government-industry-academia partnership to facilitate the incubation of new technology enterprises. The research focuses on the impact of this partnership between the government, industry, and academia in establishing new R&D institutions on business incubation. Specifically, the research aims to investigate what is the separate effect of the government, enterprises, universities, and public institutions in the establishment of new R&D institutions on enterprise incubation, and the role of cooperation between government-enterprise-academia in the enterprise incubation of new R&D institutions. In empirical tests using data from the 2020 official survey of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the results show that for each single cooperator, participation in the establishment of governments, academia has a positive impact on start-ups, while the participation of enterprises has no significant impact. In terms of cooperation, the co-established new R&D institutions are better in business incubation than the single establishment of new R&D institutions. The cooperation between government and academia in the establishment of new R&D institutions has a positive effect on business incubation, and other types of cooperation between government-industry, industry-academia, and government-industry-academia have no significant impact on business incubation. The research conclusion can provide a policy reference for optimizing the holding mode of new R&D institutions.     

Business Cycles and Investment in Productivity-Enhancing Activities: Evidence from Spanish Firms

This paper tests the opportunity-cost theory on the long-run effects of business cycles using a panel of Spanish firms during the period 1991–2010. Under this theory, the share of productivity-enhancing activities (PEAs), such as R&D investment or on-the-job training, relative to production activities should increase during downturns because of the fall in their relative cost — in terms of forgone output. This would imply that business cycles may have a (positive) long-term impact on firms' productivity growth. In the spirit of Aghion et al. (2008), we allow the impact of the cycle on PEA to vary between firms with different access to external funding. We find that, in accordance with the opportunity-cost approach, the share of R&D investment and training expenditures on total investment outlays follow a countercyclical pattern, which in the case of R&D may be reversed by the presence of credit constraints. However, the share of investment in other non-R&D-related intangible investments is found to be acyclical, which could suggest some kind of substitution across different PEAs over the cycle.     

The National Nanotechnology Initiative: Federal support for science and technology,or hidden industrial policy?

The case of the National Nanotechnology Initiative highlights elements of industrial policy carried out by the U.S. government not only by setting rules and providing infrastructure, but also by strategically selecting technology of the next generation and arranging large-scale public investment. The federal government justified the Initiative by calling for the scientific need for industrial competitiveness, an explicit integration of science and technology policy and industrial policy. Moreover, we find evidence that this program, now funding almost $1.8 billion and extending to thirteen federal agencies, was initiated and drafted by a small handful number of policy makers in Washington. At the same time, despite its intention to strengthen the industrial competitiveness, the bulk of the federal government fund continues to channel into universities and government labs and little into the private sector. Whether this goal will be achieved without more direct government focus on commercialization remains uncertain.