18.12.2018 • 22/2018
IWH leads large scale EU research project on productivity
Is productivity growth slowing in industrialised countries? And if so, why? From the start of 2019, the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) will be addressing these questions as the coordinator of a new EU project. Economists and statistics experts from nine European partners will collaborate on the three-year project, entitled MICROPROD. With a total budget of just under three million euros, it is the IWH’s largest EU project to date.
Steffen Müller
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Business Dynamics of Innovating Firms: Linking U.S. Patents with Administrative Data on Workers and Firms
Stuart Graham, Cheryl Grim, Tariqul Islam, Alan Marco, Javier Miranda
Journal of Economics and Management Strategy,
No. 3,
2018
Abstract
This paper discusses the construction of a new longitudinal database tracking inventors and patent-owning firms over time. We match granted patents between 2000 and 2011 to administrative databases of firms and workers housed at the U.S. Census Bureau. We use inventor information in addition to the patent assignee firm name to improve on previous efforts linking patents to firms. The triangulated database allows us to maximize match rates and provide validation for a large fraction of matches. In this paper, we describe the construction of the database and explore basic features of the data. We find patenting firms, particularly young patenting firms, disproportionally contribute jobs to the U.S. economy. We find that patenting is a relatively rare event among small firms but that most patenting firms are nevertheless small, and that patenting is not as rare an event for the youngest firms compared to the oldest firms. Although manufacturing firms are more likely to patent than firms in other sectors, we find that most patenting firms are in the services and wholesale sectors. These new data are a product of collaboration within the U.S. Department of Commerce, between the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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Crowdsourced Innovation: How Community Managers Affect Crowd Activities
Sabrina Jeworrek, Lars Hornuf
Abstract
In this study, we investigate whether and to what extent community managers in online collaborative communities can stimulate crowd activities through their engagement. Using a novel data set of 22 large online idea crowdsourcing campaigns, we find that active engagement of community managers positively affects crowd activities in an inverted U-shaped manner. Moreover, we evidence that intellectual stimulation by managers increases community participation, while individual consideration of users has no impact on user activities. Finally, the data reveal that community manager activities that require more effort, such as media file uploads instead of simple written comments, have a larger effect on crowd participation.
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R&D Collaborations and the Role of Proximity
Philipp Marek, Mirko Titze, Clemens Fuhrmeister, Ulrich Blum
Regional Studies,
No. 12,
2017
Abstract
R&D collaborations and the role of proximity. Regional Studies. This paper explores the impact of proximity measures on knowledge exchange measured by granted research and development (R&D) collaboration projects in German NUTS-3 regions. The results are obtained from a spatial interaction model including eigenvector spatial filters. Not only geographical but also other forms of proximity (technological, organizational and institutional) have a significant influence on the emergence of collaborations. Furthermore, the results suggest interdependences between proximity measures. Nevertheless, the analysis does not show that other forms of proximity may compensate for missing geographical proximity. The results indicate that (subsidized) collaborative innovation activities tend to cluster.
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Joint R&D Subsidies, Related Variety, and Regional Innovation
T. Broekel, Matthias Brachert, M. Duschl, T. Brenner
International Regional Science Review,
No. 3,
2017
Abstract
Subsidies for research and development (R&D) are an important tool of public R&D policy, which motivates extensive scientific analyses and evaluations. This article adds to this literature by arguing that the effects of R&D subsidies go beyond the extension of organizations’ monetary resources invested into R&D. It is argued that collaboration induced by subsidized joint R&D projects yield significant effects that are missed in traditional analyses. An empirical study on the level of German labor market regions substantiates this claim, showing that collaborative R&D subsidies impact regions’ innovation growth when providing access to related variety and embedding regions into central positions in cross-regional knowledge networks.
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05.01.2017 • 3/2017
Secretariat for research network CompNet gets new home at IWH
The Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the Secretariat for the Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet), an international network of scholars and practitioners, who share interest for top-notch research and policy analysis on competitiveness and productivity.
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05.10.2016 • 42/2016
International young researchers at IWH
Scientific insights do not stop at national borders and have to be equally accessible for women and men. “Whoever wants to do world-class research has to look beyond his own nose”, says Reint E. Gropp, president of the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association. He himself received his PhD and did research in the US for several years.
Reint E. Gropp
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The Structure and Evolution of Inter-sectoral Technological Complementarity in R&D in Germany from 1990 to 2011
T. Broekel, Matthias Brachert
Journal of Evolutionary Economics,
No. 4,
2015
Abstract
Technological complementarity is argued to be a crucial element for effective R&D collaboration. The real structure is, however, still largely unknown. Based on the argument that organizations’ knowledge resources must fit for enabling collective learning and innovation, we use the co-occurrence of firms in collaborative R&D projects in Germany to assess inter-sectoral technological complementarity between 129 sectors. The results are mapped as complementarity space for the Germany economy. The space and its dynamics from 1990 to 2011 are analyzed by means of social network analysis. The results illustrate sectors being complements both from a dyadic and portfolio/network perspective. This latter is important, as complementarities may only become fully effective when integrated in a complete set of different knowledge resources from multiple sectors. The dynamic perspective moreover reveals the shifting demand for knowledge resources among sectors at different time periods.
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Does Country Context Distance Determine Subsidiary Decision-making Autonomy? Theory and Evidence from European Transition Economies
Gjalt de Jong, Vo. van Dut, Björn Jindra, Philipp Marek
International Business Review,
No. 5,
2015
Abstract
We studied an underrepresented area in the international business (IB) literature: the effect of country context distance on the distribution of decision-making autonomy across headquarters and foreign affiliates. Foreign affiliates directly contribute to the competitive advantages of multinational enterprises, highlighting the importance of such intra-firm collaboration. The division of decision-making autonomy is a core issue in the management of headquarters–subsidiary relationships. The main contribution of our paper is that we confront two valid theoretical frameworks – business network theory and agency theory – that offer contradictory hypotheses with respect to the division of decision-making autonomy. Our study is among the first to examine this dilemma with a unique dataset from five Central and Eastern European transition countries. The empirical results provide convincing support for our approach to the study of subsidiary decision-making autonomy.
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Does Country Context Distance Determine Subsidiary Decision-making Autonomy? Theory and Evidence from European Transition Economies
Gjalt de Jong, Vo. van Dut, Björn Jindra, Philipp Marek
International Business Review,
2015
Abstract
We studied an underrepresented area in the international business (IB) literature: the effect of country context distance on the distribution of decision-making autonomy across headquarters and foreign affiliates. Foreign affiliates directly contribute to the competitive advantages of multinational enterprises, highlighting the importance of such intra-firm collaboration. The division of decision-making autonomy is a core issue in the management of headquarters–subsidiary relationships. The main contribution of our paper is that we confront two valid theoretical frameworks – business network theory and agency theory – that offer contradictory hypotheses with respect to the division of decision-making autonomy. Our study is among the first to examine this dilemma with a unique dataset from five Central and Eastern European transition countries. The empirical results provide convincing support for our approach to the study of subsidiary decision-making autonomy.
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