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The innovative performance of foreign-owned enterprises in small open economies

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Abstract

This paper compares the innovative performance of foreign-owned and domestically owned enterprises in five European countries. We look at innovation inputs, outputs, and examine how strong foreign-owned enterprises are embedded in the innovations systems of their host countries. We find that foreign ownership is associated with similar levels of innovation input, but higher levels of innovation output and higher labour productivity compared to domestic ownership. In four of the five countries, affiliates of foreign multinationals show a similar or even a higher propensity to co-operate with domestic partners than domestically owned enterprises.

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Notes

  1. See Ebersberger and Lööf (2004), Ebersberger and Lööf (2005), Ebersberger et al. (2005) for detailed results for DK, FI, NO and SE, and Dachs and Ebersberger (2006) and Dachs (2006) for detailed Austrian results.

  2. In the analysis of the Nordic countries domestic multinational companies could be identified (see Ebersberger and Lööf 2005). The results for this category are not reported here.

  3. Dachs and Ebersberger (2006) use a non-parametric approach for their analysis following Czarnitzki (2005).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Christian Bellak, Michael Barber, Jakob Edler, Helmut Gassler and Brigitte Nones for helpful comments. Bernhard Dachs gratefully acknowledges financial support by the Anniversary Fund of the Austrian National Bank and thanks Statistics Austria for delivering the data. Ebersberger and Lööf gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the Nordic Innovation Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Technology Policy, Austrian Research Centers – ARC, Vienna, Austria

    Bernhard Dachs

  2. MCI Management Center Innsbruck, Universitätsstr. 15, Innsbruck, 6020, Austria

    Bernd Ebersberger

  3. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Hans Lööf

Authors
  1. Bernhard Dachs
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  2. Bernd Ebersberger
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  3. Hans Lööf
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Correspondence to Bernhard Dachs.

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Dachs, B., Ebersberger, B. & Lööf, H. The innovative performance of foreign-owned enterprises in small open economies. J Technol Transfer 33, 393–406 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-007-9058-7

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