Does R&D performance decline with firm size?—A re-examination in terms of elasticity

There have been many previous studies exploring the relationship between R&D performance and firm size; however, to our knowledge, this issue has never been examined in terms of R&D output elasticity. This paper therefore sets out to re-examine the relationship of the two variables using R&D output elasticity as a measure of R&D performance. A total of 126 manufacturing firms, listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange over the period from 1994 to 2000, are taken as the analytical sample. One practical consideration for choosing these particular firms is the relative abundance of data available for the variables for a longitudinal investigation. The estimates suggest that there is an approximating ‘U-type’ relationship between R&D productivity and firm size. This finding suggests that both large and small firms have higher R&D productivity, and even when the sample is divided into the high-tech and traditional sectors, such a finding still holds. Therefore, in contrast to the prior studies, this study shows that size offers advantage in R&D performance.     

政府补贴对产业共性技术可持续研发行为的影响研究

结合共性技术研发过程,提出了共性技术可持续研发行为的概念框架,借鉴Stackelberg主从博弈思想,本文构建了共性技术供给及后续商业开发承担企业、市场收益实现承担企业和政府三方博弈模型,考虑企业在产业中不同的主导地位,研究政府不同补贴对共性技术可持续研发行为的影响。结果表明：政府应谨慎同时提供两类补贴;当共性技术研发努力成本较高时,政府应优先使用研发努力补贴;当市场收益实现承担企业占主导地位,研发努力成本较低时政府应优先选择使用单位成本补贴;无论是否处于主导地位,企业技术水平对政府补贴相关参数均有较大影响,政府制定补贴政策时须给予充分考虑。研究结论为政府补贴政策制定及共性技术研发实践提供了一定的参考。     

The impact of R&D spillovers on UK manufacturing TFP: A dynamic panel approach

One of the benefits claimed for investment in Research and Development (R&D) is that there is a spillover effect. Industries benefit from both their own R&D efforts as well as the efforts of other national and overseas industries. The present research presents new evidence on the long-term impact of R&D investment upon UK industry's productivity performance and on the nature of these “R&D spillovers”. The results suggest that R&D efforts from the industry itself and from other national industries have a positive impact on the industry's productivity but, interestingly, there is no gain from foreign R&D investment.     

Australian Framework for the Commercialisation of University Scientific Research

Abstract

Australia spends proportionally more on university R&D, particularly when compared with business expenditure on R&D, than almost any other advanced economy, which suggests that creating the right environment to encourage the commercialisation of Australian university research results is vital if Australia is to obtain the best economic results from its investment. In this paper a meta‐analysis is used to review literature from various sources available on the broad environment in which university research commercialisation is conducted in Australia in order to identify the key components of the environment and where change may encourage or promote better commercialisation outcomes.     

Creating advantage in peripheral regions: The role of publicly funded R&D centres

Regional investment in R&D, technological development and innovation is perceived as being strongly associated with productivity, growth and sustained international competitiveness. One policy instrument by which policy makers have attempted to create regional advantage has been the establishment of publicly funded research centres (PRCs). In this paper we develop a logic model for this type of regional intervention and examine the outputs and longer-term outcomes from a group of (18) publicly funded R&D centres. Our results suggest some positive regional impacts but also identify significant differences in terms of innovation, additionality and sustainability between university-based and company-based PRCs. University-based PRCs have higher levels of short-term additionality, demonstrate higher levels of organisational innovation but prove less sustainable. Company-based PRCs demonstrate more partial additionality in the short-term but ultimately prove more sustainable.     

Regulatory policy, value of knowledge assets and innovation strategy: The case of the Orphan Drug Act

The U.S. Orphan Drug Act provides R&D incentives to drug-makers that go beyond statutory patent protection. The study explores the act's effect on financial returns to innovation and on the strategy of orphan drug development. Results indicate that the financial return to orphan drug development is positive. The findings suggest that when market size is small and cumulative innovation is an important phenomenon the policy that extends effective patent duration or subsidizes R&D activity improves incentives to innovate.     

企业研发机构规模对企业创新的影响效应

企业研发机构是全面提高企业自主创新能力的中坚力量,但现有相关研究更多集中在企业规模与企业创新的关系上,较少关注企业研发机构规模与企业创新之间的互动关系。为此,选取2013—2020年我国29个省份的高技术企业的相关面板数据,采用联立方程模型、面板门槛模型和面板向量自回归模型对其研发机构规模与企业创新之间的静态线性关系、静态非线性关系和动态关系进行分析,并选用反向传播人工神经网络进行稳健性检验,以及运用脉冲响应函数和方差分解进一步分析企业创新、研发机构规模、研发经费投入、研发劳动力投入的脉冲响应。结果表明：企业研发机构规模与企业创新之间不存在显著静态线性关系;随着企业研发机构规模扩大,其对企业创新影响的弹性逐渐降低;随着企业创新成果水平的提高,企业研发机构规模对企业创新影响的弹性增大;企业研发机构规模扩大实际会在滞后1期时对企业创新产生最大的正向作用,且持续性不强,而企业创新对企业研发机构规模存在负向影响,说明当企业达成现阶段的创新目标后,大多不再进行大规模的创新,甚至适当削减其研发机构规模。     

Bottom-up estimation of industrial and public R&D investment by technology in support of policy-making: The case of selected low-carbon energy technologies

This paper discusses a bottom-up approach to estimate the level of R&D investment by technology in areas where data are scarce. It develops a four-step methodology for the estimation of corporate R&D investments at technology level. This approach can overcome gaps in existing data by combining publicly available information in a novel way, even though it introduces some uncertainty. This is illustrated for a set of low-carbon energy technologies that were identified as key for meeting Europe's long-term energy and climate objectives by the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan. The paper finds that the aggregated R&D investments dedicated to these technologies amounted to €3.3 billion in the EU in 2007, including public funding from European Union Member States and at EU-level, and industrial research activities from companies with headquarters registered in the EU. The results allow conclusions on the European energy research policy to be drawn, such as the dominance of industrial funds, and have provided significant input to the European policy making in this field. The paper ends with suggestions on how to further enhance the accuracy of the approach and how to widen its application to other sectors.     

Scientific foundation, organization structure, and performance of biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms

Technologists seek to advance practical applications of science while scientists seek to advance knowledge which may or may not have a practical application. Firms with a stronger basic science focus, e.g. biology and chemistry, seek to advance their scientific knowledge foundation in addition to developing and selling innovative products. Firms with a more highly applied science foundation (medicine, engineering, etc.) prioritize the development and sale of innovative products. Combining an Absorptive Capacity (AC) approach with Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) this study explores and explains how firms gain knowledge and perform given their scientific focus.Findings indicate that firms with a stronger basic science orientation are less profitable than firms with a stronger applied science orientation. Applied science firms had more acquisitions and cooperative organizations but both types of firms were more likely to acquire other firms in their quest to build knowledge stores rather than partner. Partnerships with universities were more prevalent among basic science firms than with applied science firms.     

The dynamics of R&D network in the IT industry

In this paper, we provide an empirical analysis of evolving networks of successful R&D collaborations in the IT industry (consisting of firms that obtained patents in the technological category of computers and communication) in the U.S. between 1985 and 1995. We first show that the R&D network has become more extensive, more clustered, and more unequal in the sense that ‘stars’ have emerged in the network. We then analyze the effect of the existing network structure in the process of new R&D collaboration formation. We control for unobserved similarities among firms based on the community structures within the network that the algorithm developed by Girvan and Newman (2004) identifies and find a significant cyclic closure and preferential-attachment effect.     

MNCs’ offshore R&D networks in host country's regional innovation system: The case of Taiwan-based firms in China

China has become a hot spot of R&D internationalization and a growing number of Taiwan-based firms have indeed set up R&D units in China. Taking into account China's substantial regional variations in economic development, innovation capacity, and knowledge productivity, such notions as regional innovation system (RIS) and local innovative milieu may become more relevant to the study on relationships between China and its inward R&D internationalization. Therefore, the key issue for this paper is what locational advantages of an RIS within a host country affect the network linkages and networking strategy of multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) offshore R&D units. The paper aims to enrich the current understanding of R&D internationalization in several ways. First, the paper attempts to examine the R&D networking underlying R&D internationalization by Taiwan-based firms in China, with particular reference to the sub-national level inside China. Second, the paper tries to establish a link between the literature of R&D internationalization and that of RIS, with a modified version of Dunning's eclectic paradigm. Efforts are made to map the relationship between foreign subsidiaries’ local R&D networks and their host RISs inside China. Third, the paper takes advantage of a government databank to adopt a quantitative approach, the Seemingly Unrelated Bivariate Probit Regression model, with foreign subsidiaries as the unit of analysis, to highlight the role played by some aspects of the RIS in determining the local R&D networking of Taiwanese subsidiaries in China. Our evident shows that MNCs’ offshore R&D units that purse home-based technology exploitation strategy, the mainstream strategy regarding the developing host country, tend to be located in a host region with a strong knowledge application and exploitation subsystem, while an RIS with a strong knowledge generation and diffusion subsystem, within such a developing country as China, may induce MNCs’ local R&D units to pursue home-base technology augmenting strategy. On balance, not only the location choice but also the local R&D linkages of MNCs’ offshore subsidiaries are related to appropriate fits between the RIS and the subsidiaries’ innovation network inside the host country.     

The nanotech versus the biotech revolution: Sources of productivity in incumbent firm research

Does the adaptation of incumbent firms to new methods of inventing follow similar patterns across industries and inventions? We investigate this question in the context of the revolutionary scientific advances enabling biotechnology and nanotechnology, both of which represent inventions of methods of inventing for incumbent firms. We hypothesize that an incumbent firm's ability to exploit these new methods of invention depends initially on access to tacit knowledge on how to employ the new methods. Over time, however, as firms learn and/or the knowledge becomes codified in routine procedures or commercially available equipment, inventive output is more highly dependent on traditional R&D investments. We empirically test these hypotheses on two longitudinal samples over the 21-year time period between 1980 and 2000: 80 incumbent pharmaceutical firms generating 15,607 biotechnology patents, and 249 firms across a diverse set of industries that were granted a total of 3236 nanotechnology patents. We find broad support for our conjectures.     

Institutionalizing end-user demand steering in agricultural R&D: Farmer levy funding of R&D in The Netherlands

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the institutionalization of demand-driven modes of working in the R&D planning process and reveal possible weaknesses, through an analysis of a system of collective R&D funding by farmers. The findings indicate that, although end-users have the opportunity to raise issues that lead to R&D, queries are influenced by several actors in the R&D planning process in such a way that they do not adequately reflect farmers’ innovation needs. Conclusions are that more emphasis is required on joint demand articulation and involvement of end-users and other stakeholders in the innovation process, and on the institutional development of R&D funding organizations in order to adopt a more inclusive view on innovation.     

AMC视角下多市场接触对企业研发强度的影响--基于全球医药行业的实证研究

以往对多市场接触的研究大多集中于考察多市场接触对下游产品市场竞争强度的影响，本文将研究的注意力转向上游要素市场。基于多市场接触理论和动态竞争的意识—动机—能力 (awareness-motivation-capability, AMC) 框架，探讨了多市场接触对企业研发强度的影响。对全球最大的38家制药企业2007—2016年期间的面板数据分析表明，把企业间竞争的范围延伸到上游研发市场时，多市场接触会表现出显著的竞争效应，即多市场接触会正向影响企业的研发强度，从而说明经典的相互克制效应并不适用于要素市场。此外，本文检验了多市场接触和研发强度关系的边界条件，焦点企业专利存量和现金持有比会削弱多市场接触和研发强度之间的正向关系，而销量下降产品比例会强化二者之间关系。     

R&D manpower and technological performance: The impact of demographic and task-related diversity

We assess the impact of R&D manpower diversity on firms’ technological performance. Relying on insights from two theoretical perspectives on team diversity (i.e. social categorization perspective and information decision-making perspective), we hypothesize that both demographic and task-related sources of diversity within firms’ R&D workforce influence technological performance. In addition, we expect that these two dimensions of diversity interact with each other. To test our hypotheses, we rely on survey data from 938 Singaporean firms, providing in-depth information on three sources of demographic diversity (i.e. gender, age, and nationality of R&D employees) and two sources of task-related diversity (i.e. educational and knowledge area background of R&D employees). Our findings point to significant interactions between different sources of R&D manpower diversity. In particular, we identify substitutive relationships between (a) educational and gender diversity, and (b) nationality and knowledge area diversity.     

The effects of R&D tax credits on patenting and innovations

Norwegian business spending on R&D is low by OECD standards. To stimulate business R&D, in 2002 the Norwegian government introduced a tax-based incentive, SkatteFUNN. We analyze the effects of SkatteFUNN on the likelihood of innovating and patenting. Using a rich database for Norwegian firms, we find that projects receiving tax credits result in the development of new production processes and to some extent the development of new products for the firm. Firms that collaborate with other firms are more likely to be successful in their innovation activities. However, the scheme does not appear to contribute to innovations in the form of new products for the market or patenting.     

劳动生产率对经济增长的影响研究

我国经济的快速增长得益于劳动生产率的提高,但目前我国经济增长的模式难以持续.引入劳动生产率来分析,中国巨大的金融资本需求空间、充足的人力资本市场、技术的持续进步、基础设施的改善以及体制改革的成功将使经济发展仍有着巨大的增长空间.     

企业研发和培训投入对产出与生产率的影响研究

随着经济的发展以及竞争的更加激烈,企业越来越重视其在生产方面所具有的优势,企业研发与员工培训支出是企业提高自身竞争优势的重要决策,而目前都是单纯研究企业研发以及在职培训的影响,这样就会忽略它们之间的交互作用。通过2005--2007年中国制造业企业面板数据检验企业研发以及在职培训对产出和生产率的影响,结论认为：在职培训比研发更普遍;研发与在职培训的产出弹性比较小,从而在短期内对企业生产所发挥的作用不大;企业研发与在职培训对生产率都有显著的正向作用,因而研发与在职培训对企业长期发展具有显著作用。     

知识管理论文著者科学生产率统计分析

对论文著者的科学生产率进行简单的概述,以知识管理专题论文为例研究论文著者科学生产率状况,并将研究的结果与论文著者的洛特卡定律进行比较分析,得出知识管理专题论文著者的科学生产率情况,进而得出"知识管理"领域的研究状况。     

The obsession for competitiveness and its impact on statistics: the construction of high-technology indicators

High technology is a concept much in vogue in OECD countries, for it is a symbol of an “advanced” economy. This paper looks at why and how the concept and its indicator acquired such fame. It explains that the reason has to do with the fact that the indicator emerged in the context of debates on the competitiveness of countries and their efforts to maintain or improve their positions in world trade. The first part looks at the early statistics behind the indicator (R&D/sales), statistics developed in official analyses of industrial R&D surveys before the 1950s. The second part traces the evolution of the R&D/sales ratio in the 1960s through its use as an indicator of research or technological intensity. The third part discusses the internationalization of the indicator via the OECD.