Abstract
The global development of solar photovoltaic power is seen as a potentially major technology in the pursuit of alternative energy sources. Given its evolutionary nature, in terms of both technology and the market, there is some discernible divergence between the innovative capability and production capacity of certain countries. We set out in the present study to explore this issue by examining the productive and innovative performance of six countries covering the period from 1996 to 2006. Our empirical analyses, at both country level and firm level, provide a strong indication that such tendency of incongruence possibly comes as a result of differences in the business strategies adopted by the various countries, as well as the extent of their technological advantage.
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Notes
See http://iea-pvps.org.
See the introduction on the website of Solar PV Information (http://solarpv.itri.org.tw).
See “The Strategy Study of Solar PV Industry Development under Green Currents”, published by Ministry of Economic Affairs (2004).
See “The Development Trend of Global Solar PV Market Driven by Policies”, published by Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (2009).
Refer to the website of International Energy Agency for the solar PV policies across countries (http://www.iea.org).
The keywords are provided by Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. They had invited several experts in the PV field in Taiwan to carry out this keyword list.
The keywords for searching our solar PV patents are likely to be relevant to semiconductors and display panel technologies, which may result in inflated PV patent statistics in this research.
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Acknowledgments
The authors appreciate the financial supports from both Taiwan’s National Science Council under grant numbers NSC99-2410-H-002-044-MY2 and NSC 100-2628-H-343-001-MY2 and Center for China Studies, National Taiwan University. We also thanks for the assistance from Che-Jung Hsu, Ran-Hsin Shaw, Chungyi Hsu, and Yi-chen Wang.
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Jang, SL., Chen, LJ., Chen, J.H. et al. Innovation and production in the global solar photovoltaic industry. Scientometrics 94, 1021–1036 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0907-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0907-2