Assessing Technology and Innovation Policies

Cristiano Antonelli, Albert N. Link

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429663277
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

This volume brings together eminent international scholars to discuss and analyze regional and national technology and innovation policies from an economic assessment or economic impacts perspective. The analysis covers policies relevant to countries in Europe and Asia, and the United States.

Not only might this volume initiate further study of technology and innovation policies, on a country-by-country basis, but also it might open doors for comparative policy analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Economics of Innovation and New Technology.

INTRODUCTION

Assessing technology and innovation policies: introduction

Albert N. Link

ABSTRACT

This collection of papers brings together eminent international scholars to discuss and analyze regional and country technology and innovation policies from an economic assessment or economic impacts perspectives. The breadth of analysis covers policies relevant to countries in Europe and Asia, as well as the United States. Not only might this collection initiate further study, on a country-by-country basis, of technology and innovation policies, but also it might open doors for comparative policy analysis.

This special issue focuses on technology and innovation policies from an economic assessment or economic impacts perspective. The collection of papers brings together the work of eminent international scholars in this field of study.

The paper by Amoroso, Coad, and Grassano, ‘European R&D Networks: A Snapshot from the 7th EU Framework Programme’, assesses the contribution of the 7th European Framework Programmes to the integration of a European Research Area by looking at the determinants of inter-regional collaborations across three groups of collaborations: collaborations among more developed regions, between more and less advanced regions, and among less developed regions. Compared to previous studies, the authors consider a wider range of determinants of regional R&D cooperation, including social, technological, and human capital proximity. Their results show that there is a high degree of persistency in cooperation among close and similar regions, and that the participation of a peripheral region generally hinders the collaboration intensity. These findings will play a central role in the discourse on the existing obstacles to the participation of peripheral regions and the challenges for their future integration.

Lehmann and Menter’s paper, ‘Public Cluster Policy and Neighboring Regions: Beggar-thy-neighbor?’ visits an old issue that has caught the imagination and excitement of policy makers in the last decades: Does cluster policy positively shape member firms and the surrounding regions or does cluster policy also turn ugly? This question stands in the focus of the paper. As research on public cluster policy has largely taken a perspective evaluating firm performance or local cluster performance, almost neglecting spillover effects on neighboring regions, this study evaluates the effects and performance of public cluster policy in three ways. First, by evaluating public cluster policy per se. Second, by considering whether positive effects are shaped as a consequence of the ‘picking-the-winner’ competition or by the subsidizing effects afterwards. Finally, by determining whether the effects of public cluster policy spill over to neighboring regions or are mainly bounded locally. Based on a unique panel dataset encompassing all German labor market regions and covering a 15-year period, the authors apply difference-in-difference estimations and quantile regression techniques to identify and separate the different effects. Their results confirm positive cluster effects of the chosen industries, but also show that positive externalities are spatially limited. They point out that policy makers should be aware of the local boundedness of public cluster initiatives and possible adverse ‘beggar-thy-neighbor’ effects.

In ‘Great Expectations: Assessing the Impact of Commercialization-Focused Policies Among Malaysia’s Public Research Institutes’ by Strong, Chandran, and Hayter, Malaysian innovation policies related to public research institutes (PRIs) are considered. This is certainly an understudied subject in the literature. Specifically, the Malaysian government sought to transform PRIs from organizations focused on basic research to understand public problems into organizations focused on the commercialization of research in an effort to differentiate them from universities and to support economic growth and development. The authors, however, find that university and PRI researchers are not yet distinct with respect to their commercialization-oriented research outputs, including patents and prototypes. The authors suggest that this lack of differentiation stems from the historical focus of PRIs on basic research, which results in the hiring of Ph.D. researchers without an orientation toward applied research and commercialization.

The paper by Daly, ‘The Effect of Participation in Denmark’s Innovation Network Program’, begins with an overview of the Danish innovation program landscape and then proceeds to discuss in more detail the history and goals of the Innovation Network program. The main focus of the paper is a firm-level quantitative evaluation of the program on firm productivity. Using non-parametric matching, the effects of the program on both labor and total factor productivity are estimated to be positive and significant. Participants in the Innovation Network program are also significantly more likely to participate in other Danish innovation programs in subsequent years, explaining one mechanism by which the Innovation Network facilitates productivity growth. Evidence is found that small firms reap the largest benefits from program participation. The author concludes by estimating cluster-level effects of program participation.

In ‘The Effects of Public Policies in Fostering University Spinoffs in Italy’, Meoli, Pierucci, and Vismara explore whether the introduction of performance-based research funding systems impact on the proliferation of academic spinoffs. These type of funding systems, increasingly applied in European countries, often include the number of established spinoffs as a measure of technology transfer among the indicators of universities’ third mission. Since the Lisbon Agenda, there is a trend in Europe in implementing this type of policy that aims to promote technology transfer. Several countries such as France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK have already implemented research assessment programs that clearly consider or incentivize the creation of academic spinoffs. In this scenario, Italy is a particularly suitable case to test the effectiveness of such policies in terms of technology transfer as measured by the number of academic spinoffs created over a time horizon. Indeed, Italy has experienced in the last decade the joint occurrence of (1) severe cuts to funding devoted to research; (2) increasing shortage of academic career opportunities, particularly for early stage scholars, and (3) growing attention to the monitoring and evaluation of the University third mission. This peculiarity allows one to investigate whether the rise in the number of academic spinoffs companies is consequential to the implemented policy. Their analysis shows that the introduction of a performance-based research funding system increases the number of academic spinoffs, nevertheless this is not the result of academic research exploitation and technology transfer activities. On the contrary, other factors unrelated to the scope of the policies, such as the lack of job opportunities, or the presence of relative skilled unemployment at regional level play a major role in shaping the rate of establishment of academic spinoffs. The authors conclude that the sheer number of establishments of academic spinoffs is a poor measure of technology transfer.

The locus of innovation is no longer in the company but rather in its nexus of relationships with other organizations. The paper of Coletti and Landoni, ‘Collaborations for Innovation: A Meta-Study of Relevant Typologies, Governance and Policies’, addresses the increasingly important issue of collaborative innovation arguing that there is a category of non-equity partnerships aiming at various types of innovation that can be studied organically. These collaborations of innovation include consortia, clusters, and formally established dyadic agreements. Through a meta-study of several cases of collaboration, this paper identifies the two key elements to define innovation collaborations; namely, their members number and characteristics and governance in its different forms (structural, contractual, relational), and the main phases that collaborations go through. Opportunistic behavior and collaborative inertia are a frequent risk of collaboration and should be avoided through careful selection of partners and implementation of governance. The final part of the paper focuses on policies to improve collaboration, their rationale (market and system failure), and how collaborations can be shaped in order to maximize their impact. This paper paves the way for further studies in a field that, despite its recent growth, still lacks a complete theory.

The paper by Kergroach, Meissner, and Vonortas, ‘Technology Transfer and Commercialization by Universities and PRIs: Benchmarking OECD Country Policy Approaches’, presents a benchmarking exercise of the policy mix relating to technology transfer by universities and PRIs across countries. It uses a benchmarking concept to compare policies across countries, which takes account of country structural features, the way policies are embedded in the national science, technology and innovation (STI) policy context, and the country’s development stage. The paper focuses on policies aiming at fostering technology transfer and commercialization of public research in select OECD member states and emerging economies, drawing on the recent EC/OECD STI Outlook Policy database. Countries combine instruments across different policy domains, including business innovation, entrepreneurship, and industrial policies, in accordance with their public research orientation and business absorptive capacities. Policy interventions focus on upstream and/or downstream stages of knowledge transfer as attention is given to adjusting the supply of public research to social and economic needs or to encouraging business demand for public research results. The authors find that transfer and commercialization of public research are increasingly integrated into STI policy governance. Policy sets for knowledge transfer tend to be denser in more advanced STI systems.

‘Towards a European R&D Incentive? An Assessment of R&D Provisions under a Common Corporate Tax Base’ by d’Andria, Pontikakis, and Skonieczna makes the case that EU businesses underinvest in R&D, which is a driver of economic growth and productivity. Taxation has been increasingly used to stimulate investment in R&D. A recent proposal for a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) across the European Union (EU) includes an R&D incentive. Their paper presents the rationale for the inclusion of R&D provisions, quantifies the subsidy implied by alternative options using the user’s cost approach, and approximates aggregate impacts by means of simple extrapolations from elasticities found in literature. The authors find that the CCCTB without an R&D incentive would significantly deteriorate incentives to invest in R&D. They present alternative options and argue that the level of support should be ambitious to address the pressing need in the EU to invest more, stay globally competitive and reach the EU’s target of investing 3% of its GDP in R&D. Importantly, to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by this tax reform, EU member states will have to coherently mobilize a range of policies and engage in complementary non-tax interventions in their national innovation systems. d’Andria, Pontikakis, and Skonieczna conclude with a broad consideration of what these may be for the varied and variably developed business innovation capabilities found across the EU.

The final paper in this special issue is by Adams and Link, ‘The Structure and Performance of U.S. Research Joint Ventures: Inferences and Implications from the Advanced Technology Program’. Research Joint Ventures (RJVs) are projects that combine the research resources of different firms. In this paper, the authors examine a sample of RJVs supported by the U.S. Advanced Technology Program (ATP), and they show that the projects yield revenues that are far less than costs. Not unrelated, the RJVs are subject to commercialization delays, loss of intellectual property, and product market competition. Partner firms undertake joint research, but if they commercialize at all, they do so separately, to avoid splitting of revenues from new products. Ultimately, difficulties with the RJVs are due to the fact that frequently, firms are potential competitors. Looking beyond the case of ATP, future policy should support RJVs that involve basic research and create knowledge spillovers, for which partner R&D is complementary and where partner firms are upstream suppliers and downstream customers, not potential competitors.

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European R&D networks: a snapshot from the 7th EU Framework Programme

Sara Amoroso, Alex Coad and Nicola Grassano

ABSTRACT

Recent empirical studies have investigated the territorial impact of Europe’s research policies, in particular the contribution of the European Framework Programmes to the integration of a European Research Area. This paper deepens the analysis on the integration and participation of peripheral regions, by focusing on the differences in intensity and determinants of inter-regional collaborations across three groups of collaborations. We consider collaborations among more developed regions, between more and less developed regions, and among less developed regions. Building on the recent spatial interaction literature, this paper investigates the effects of physical, institutional, social and technological proximity on the intensity of inter-regional research collaboration across heterogenous European regions. We find that the impact of disparities in human capital and technological proximity on regional R&D cooperation is relevant and differs across subgroups of collaborations. Moreover, despite the efforts of integrating marginal actors, peripheral regions have l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface - Towards a new knowledge policy
• 1. Assessing technology and innovation policies: introduction
• 2. European R&D networks: a snapshot from the 7th EU Framework Programme
• 3. Public cluster policy and neighboring regions: beggar-thy-neighbor?
• 4. Great expectations: assessing the impact of commercialization-focused policies among Malaysia's public research institutes
• 5. The effect of participation in Denmark's Innovation Network program
• 6. The effects of public policies in fostering university spinoffs in Italy
• 7. Collaborations for innovation: a meta-study of relevant typologies, governance and policies
• 8. Technology transfer and commercialisation by universities and PRIs: benchmarking OECD country policy approaches
• 9. Towards a European R&D incentive? An assessment of R&D provisions under a common corporate tax base
• 10. The structure and performance of U.S. research joint ventures: inferences and implications from the Advanced Technology Program
• Index