Abstract
While it is widely acknowledged that internal R&D is a fundamental source of the ability to absorb, select and use external knowledge, severe data limitations prevent from capturing differences across firms in this respect. Using a novel dataset supplied by the Italian Bureau of Statistics, we highlight that, when controlling for internal R&D efforts, not all firms are equally prone to gain access to external technology, and to the knowledge provided by universities in particular. We find that firms which do not only perform R&D activities but also belong to a group exhibit a higher propensity to access external knowledge by either contracting out R&D or cooperating with external parties, as compared to independent firms that are not organized into groups. This premium persists when controlling for different measures of internal R&D efforts. Furthermore, the differential in the propensity to access external knowledge is particularly high in the case of R&D performers belonging to foreign groups, i.e. Italian affiliates of foreign owned companies; and it is even higher in the case of the few Italian firms that have R&D activities abroad. The relative dis-advantage of independent firms, which represent the bulk of the Italian industry and include most small and medium sized enterprises, appears to be less of an obstacle in the case of linkages with universities, especially when R&D contracting out is considered.
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Notes
Economics of innovation has long emphasized the links between internal and external knowledge that reflect the systemic nature of technical change (Mowery and Rosenberg 1989; Cohen and Levinthal 1989, 1990). IO models have traditionally emphasized a dual role of spillovers: outgoing spillovers may reduce the incentives of firms to enter cooperative agreements while incoming spillovers increase the attractiveness of cooperation (De Bondt and Veugelers 1991; Kesteloot and Veugelers 1995; Eaton and Eswaran 1997). More recent IO models take into account that firms can attempt to manage spillovers, trying to minimize outgoing spillovers while at the same time maximizing incoming spillovers (Cassiman et al. 2002; Martin 2002; Amir et al. 2003). Firms can increase the effectiveness of incoming spillovers by investing in “absorptive capacity”.
Whether this should lead to overestimate, rather than underestimate, the actual R&D efforts, is an empirical question. On the one hand, firms might be induced to register multi-task workers according to their prevailing activities, a practice that is most likely to produce a downward bias in the measurement of working time devoted to R&D. On the other hand, head-counts would lead to an overestimation of R&D efforts in the case of firms making an extensive use of part-time contracts.
Running separate regressions by typology of firms, it comes out that R&D employees have always a positive and significant impact only in the case of ING firms, while they are always not significant for foreign subsidiaries.
The RS1 survey also asks whether the firm has R&D contracted out to foreign public institutions, including universities abroad. However, figures on this option are close to zero for all years in the considered period.
Also for the cooperation variable, the choice “cooperation with foreign universities” does exist but it is almost always equal to zero.
Results of these robustness check regressions are available from the authors upon request.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the remarkable work carried out at ISTAT by Giulio Perani for the construction and analysis of the RS1 dataset, which is used in this paper, and for his useful suggestions. They also thank Carmen Aina, Bernardo Balboni and Davide Castellani for valuable comments and insights on the empirical analysis carried out in this paper. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Cozza, C., Zanfei, A. Firm heterogeneity, absorptive capacity and technical linkages with external parties in Italy. J Technol Transf 41, 872–890 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-015-9404-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-015-9404-0