Abstract
Although its importance was first recognized long ago, the role of knowledge in firm performance has recently been rediscovered as a key to economic prosperity. That goes for the micro level (Eliasson, 1990; Grant, 1991) as well as the macro level (Romer, 1986; Grossman & Helpman, 1991). Still, most economic models tend to ignore knowledge factors or classify them as residual effects. If knowledge is incorporated at all, it is generally restricted to R&D investments, although activities like organizational routines, education, networks, marketing, supporting systems, etc., all form the base of the knowledge stock of a firm or country (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Spencer & Valla, 1989; Porter, 1990). As pointed out by for instance Freeman (1994) "it is often unsatisfactory to use R&D expenditure statistics as a surrogate for all those activities at the level of the firm which are directed towards knowledge accumulation, technical change and innovation. We have measures of 'capital-intensity' and of 'energy-intensity', but not of 'knowledge-intensity'".
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Braunerhjelm, P. (2000). Does Knowledge Investment Increase Profitability?. In: Knowledge Capital and the “New Economy”. Economics of Science, Technology and Innovation, vol 20. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4415-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4415-9_3
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