[pt] A inovação impulsiona o crescimento econômico e se conecta com o ciclo evolutivo das firmas, que lançam novos produtos em uma busca contínua pela melhoria do desempenho. Com o advento da inovação aberta, mais firmas passaram a complementar sua base de conhecimentos e a abastecer o processo inovador com fontes externas. Entretanto, quando a inovação é desenvolvida, parte dos novos conhecimentos também se torna pública por meio dos knowledge spillovers, potencialmente beneficiando outras firmas. A relação entre o desempenho inovador e as fontes externas de conhecimento, como a colaboração da firma com seus parceiros, foi amplamente estudada em mercados desenvolvidos. Contudo, o mesmo não se observa para os knowledge spillovers, especialmente no caso de países menos avançados em relação a inovação. Este estudo analisou em que medida os conhecimentos externos fornecidos pela colaboração com parceiros, e, em especial, pelos knowledge spillovers da indústria, afetam o desempenho inovador de produto e o crescimento das firmas. Foi proposto um modelo conceitual para mensurar a contribuição relativa dessas fontes, bem como o impacto exercido pelo porte das firmas sobre as relações estudadas. A análise foi conduzida para uma amostra de 913 firmas de manufatura colombianas, com dados extraídos da pesquisa sobre inovação EDIT, para o período de 2011 a 2016. As hipóteses foram testadas utilizando a técnica de modelagem de equações estruturais. Para entender o impacto do porte das firmas foi empregada a análise multigrupo. Os resultados apoiaram a maioria das hipóteses e forneceram alguns insights. Os efeitos positivos da colaboração da firma sobre o desempenho inovador de produto foram corroborados, revelando que ambientes escassos em recursos, como o da Colômbia, incentivam a colaboração independentemente do porte da firma. Quanto aos efeitos positivos dos knowledge spillovers da indústria sobre o desempenho inovador de produto, o suporte foi dependente do porte da firma. Para as pequenas e médias empresas (PMEs), esses efeitos não apenas foram confirmados, como se provaram superiores aos da colaboração com parceiros. Esse achado evidenciou que os knowledge spillovers da indústria são a fonte mais relevante na explicação do desempenho inovador de produto das PMEs colombianas, mesmo quando a colaboração da firma também é significativa. No caso das grandes empresas (GEs), a contribuição direta dos knowledge spillovers da indústria sobre o desempenho inovador de produto não foi significativa, possivelmente relacionada a sua maior abundância interna de recursos. Já para o efeito moderado pela capacidade absortiva, a contribuição foi negativa, possivelmente indicando que as perdas de conhecimentos geradas pelos outgoing spillovers estão prejudicando o desempenho inovador de produto das GEs. O estudo também corroborou que o crescimento das firmas de ambos os portes é positivamente influenciado pelo seu desempenho inovador. Entretanto, os resultados para os knowledge spillovers da indústria sugerem que as PMEs colombianas podem estar se comportando oportunisticamente, pegando carona excessiva nos investimentos em P&D das GEs, o que pode reduzir os incentivos dessas últimas em seguir investindo em inovação. Espera-se que os achados desse estudo contribuam com os esforços da Colômbia em criar melhores condições para que a inovação prospere. / [en] Innovation drives economic growth and connects with the firms evolutionary cycle that launches new products in a continuous quest for performance improvement. With the advent of open innovation, more firms have begun to complement their knowledge base and to fuel the innovative process with external sources. However, when innovation is developed, part of the new knowledge also becomes public through knowledge spillovers, thus potentially benefiting other firms. The relation between innovation performance and external knowledge sources, such as the firm s collaboration with partners, has been extensively studied in developed markets. However, the same is not observed for knowledge spillovers, especially in the case of countries that are less advanced with respect to innovation. This study analyzed the extent to which external knowledge provided by the collaboration with partners and especially the industry knowledge spillovers affect product innovation performance and firm growth. A conceptual model was proposed to measure the relative contribution of these sources as well as the impact of the firm size on the studied relations. The analysis was conducted on a sample of 913 Colombian manufacturing firms with data extracted from EDIT innovation research for the period 2011 to 2016. The hypotheses were tested using the structural equation modeling technique. To understand the impact of firm size on the model relationships, a multigroup analysis was carried out. The results supported most hypotheses and provided some interesting insights. The positive effects of the firm collaboration on product innovation performance were corroborated, revealing that resource-scarce environments, such as Colombia, encourage collaboration regardless of the size of the firm. As for the positive effects of industry knowledge spillovers on product innovation performance, support was contingent on the firm size. For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), not only were these effects confirmed but also proved to be superior to those of collaboration with partners. This finding makes it evident that knowledge spillovers are the most relevant source in explaining the product innovation performance of Colombian SMEs, even when the firm collaboration is also significant. In the case of the large enterprises (LEs), the direct contribution of the industry knowledge spillovers on product innovation performance was not significant, possibly due to their greater internal abundance of resources. For the effect moderated by the absorptive capacity, the contribution was negative, possibly indicating that the knowledge losses generated by outgoing spillovers are detrimental to the innovation performance of these firms. The study also corroborated that the growth of firms of both sizes is positively influenced by their innovation performance. However, the findings for industry knowledge spillovers suggest that Colombian SMEs may be behaving opportunistically, excessively free-riding on R&D investments of LEs which may reduce the incentives for the latter to keep investing in innovation. It is hoped that these findings will contribute to Colombia s efforts to create better conditions for innovation to thrive.

In this study we examine the dynamic interactions between credit growth and output growth using the spillover index approach of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012). Based on quarterly data on credit growth and GDP growth over the period 1957Q1 -2012Q4 for the G7 countries we find that: (i) spillovers between credit growth and GDP growth evolve rather heterogeneously over time and across countries, and increase during extreme economic events. (ii) Spillovers between credit growth and GDP growth are of bidirectional nature, indicating bidirectional spillovers of shocks between the financial and the real sector. (iii) In the period shortly before and during the global financial crisis, the link between credit growth and GDP growth becomes more pronounced. In particular, the financial sector plays a dominant role during the early stages of the crisis, while the real sector quickly takes over as the dominant source of spillovers. (iv) Interestingly, credit growth in the US is the dominant transmitter of shocks to the G7 countries, and especially to other G7 countries' real sectors in the run up period to (and during) the global financial crisis. Overall, our results suggest that the magnitude and direction of spillovers between financial cycles and business cycles vary over time along with changes in the economic environment in the G7 countries. (authors' abstract)

No description available.

The English Premier League is regarded as one of the most prominent sporting competitions in the world. In the last decade the league (and by definition it’s member clubs) have become highly attractive to wealthy foreign investors, having taken ownership of a number of clubs across the league. This thesis seeks to investigate the motivations and consequences behind this foreign direct investment (FDI). The study uses a multi-method approach not commonly found within the sports economics or FDI literature combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. The thesis has generated responses from ‘elite’ level respondents at Premier League clubs together with members of the supporters’ movement. Existing data from club sources and market reports has been collected in order to assess the motivations and consequences of FDI. The thesis finds the motives behind football FDI to be somewhat different to those held by other forms of business organisation. Football is a mostly loss-making industry, but despite this weakness, some investors have purchased Premier League clubs for economic reasons. The importance of non-economic motives, such as profile enhancement, and the notion of the trophy asset were also found to be influential motives behind some football FDI. These aspects are not strongly reflected in the FDI literature, and they imply football is different to other forms of investment. FDI is shown to be mostly beneficial for the clubs receiving the investment, but for non-acquired clubs negative consequences are found in terms of wages, transfer costs, profits, and debt. For the Premier League itself, FDI has been positive in terms of enhancing the league’s stature, revenues, and the quality of matches. Some benefits were found at the regional level. This thesis covers the gap within the literature surrounding FDI and football, and also raises wider points about the generalizability of FDI theory to all industries.

This paper concentrates on the central link between productivity and knowledge capital, and shifts attention from firms and industries to regions. The objective is to measure knowledge elasticity effects within a regional Cobb- Douglas production function framework, with an emphasis on knowledge spillovers. The analysis uses a panel of 203 European regions to estimate the effects over the period 1997-2002. The dependent variable is total factor productivity (TFP). We use a region-level relative TFP index as an approximation to the true TFP measure. This index describes how efficiently each region transforms physical capital and labour into outputs. The explanatory variables are internal and out-of-region stocks of knowledge, the latter capturing the contribution of interregional knowledge spillovers. We use patents to measure knowledge capital. Patent stocks are constructed such that patents applied at the European Patent Office in one year add to the stock in the following and then depreciate throughout the patents effective life according to a rate of knowledge obsolescence. A random effects panel data spatial error model is advocated and implemented for analyzing the productivity effects. The findings provide a fairly remarkable confirmation of the role of knowledge capital contributing to productivity differences among regions, and adding an important dimension to the discussion, showing that knowledge spillover effects increase with geographic proximity. (authors' abstract)

In this study, we examine the dynamic link between returns and volatility of commodities and currency markets. Based on weekly data over the period from January 6, 1987 to July 22, 2014, we find the following empirical regularities. First, our results suggest that the information contents of gold, silver, platinum, and the CHF/USD and GBP/USD exchange rates can help improve forecast accuracy of returns and volatilities of palladium, crude oil and the EUR/CHF and GBP/USD exchange rates. Second, gold (CHF/USD) is the dominant commodity (currency) transmitter of return and volatility spillovers to the remaining assets in our model. Third, the analysis of dynamic spillovers shows time{ and event{specific patterns. For instance, the dynamic spillover effects originating in gold and silver (platinum) returns and volatility intensified (degraded) in the period marked by the global financial crisis. After the global financial crisis, the net transmitting role of gold and silver (platinum) returns shocks weakened (strengthened), while the net transmitting role of gold, silver and platinum volatility shocks remained relatively high. Overall, our findings reveal that, while the static analysis clearly classifies the aforementioned variables into net transmitters and net receivers, the dynamic analysis denotes episodes wherein the role of transmitters and receivers of return (volatility) spillovers can be interrupted or even reversed. Hence, even if certain commonalities prevail in each identified category of commodities, such commonalities are time - and event - dependent. (authors' abstract)

The research performed throughout this dissertation aims at implementing quantitative methods in order to assess economic and technological performances of firms, i.e. it tries to assess the impacts of the determinants of technological activity on the results of this activity. For this purpose, a representative sample of the most important R&D firms in the world is constituted. The micro-economic nature of the analysis, as well as its international dimension are two main features of this research at the empirical level. The second chapter illustrates the importance of R&D investments, patenting activities and other measures of technological activities performed by firms over the last 10 years. The third chapter describes the main features as well as the construction of the database. The raw data sample consists of comparable detailed micro-level data on 2676 large manufacturing firms from several countries. These firms have reported important R&D expenditures over the period 1980-1994. The fourth chapter explores the dynamic structure of the patent-R&D relationship by considering the number of patent applications as a function of present and lagged levels of R&D expenditures. R&D spillovers as well as technological and geographical opportunities are taken into account as additional determinants in order to explain patenting behaviours. The estimates are based on recently developed econometric techniques that deal with the discrete non-negative nature of the dependent patent variable as well as the simultaneity that can arise between the R&D decisions and patenting. The results show evidence of a rather contemporaneous impact of R&D activities on patenting. As far as R&D spillovers are concerned, these externalities have a significantly higher impact on patenting than own R&D. Furthermore, these effects appear to take more time, three years on average, to show up in patents. The fifth chapter explores the contribution of own stock of R&D capital to productivity performance of firms. To this end the usual productivity residual methodology is implemented. The empirical section presents a first set of results which replicate the analysis of previous studies and tries to assess the robustness of the findings with regard to the above issues. Then, further results, based on different sub samples of the data set, investigate to what extent the R&D contribution on productivity differs across firms of different industries and geographic areas or between small and large firms and low and high-tech firms. The last section explores more carefully the simultaneity issue. On the whole, the estimates indicate that R&D has a positive impact on productivity performances. Yet, this contribution is far from being homogeneous across the different dimensions of data or according to the various assumptions retained in the productivity model. The last empirical chapter goes deeper into the analysis of firms' productivity increases, by considering besides own R&D activities the impact of technological spillovers. The chapter begins by surveying the alternative ways proposed in the literature in order to asses the effect of R&D spillovers on productivity. The main findings reported by some studies at the micro level are then outlined. Then, the framework to formalize technological externalities and other technological determinants is exposed. This framework is based on a positioning of firms into a technological space using their patent distribution across technological fields. The question of whether the externalities generated by the technological and geographic neighbours are different on the recipient's productivity is also addressed by splitting the spillover variable into a local and national component. Then, alternative measures of technological proximity are examined. Some interesting observations emerge from the empirical results. First, the impact of spillovers on productivity increases is positive and much more important than the contribution of own R&D. Second, spillover effects are not the same according to whether they emanate from firms specialized in similar technological fields or firms more distant in the technological space. Finally, the magnitude and direction of these effects are radically different within and between the pillars of the Triad. While European firms do not appear to particularly benefit from both national and international sources of spillovers, US firms are mainly receptive to their national stock and Japanese firms take advantage from the international stock.

<p> </p><p>Since the 1990s and the Swedish membership in the European Union in 1995, the presence of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) has increased radically in the Swedish economy. The objective with this study is to analyze MNEs effects in different regions within the Swedish manufacturing industry in terms of productivity. Is a region with more MNEs, more pro-ductive than a region with a lower share of MNEs? The theory claims that productivity spillovers of MNEs occurs through three channels namely, via R&D, increased competi-tion and transmission of technology. By observing 81 regions which consists of all 290 municipals in Sweden and taking the average value of productivity and the explanatory variables trough 1997-2004, a cross-sectional analysis is conducted. The results evidently showed signs of productivity spillovers of MNEs on local firms in the manufacturing in-dustry. Findings suggest that (1) a regions with higher share of MNEs did face a higher re-gional productivity. However the spillovers was not successfully absorbed by regions with a industry structure that was not dominated by a the manufacturing industry. (2) Larger re-gions, in terms of population, tend to show a lower productivity level compared to the av-erage levels of the rest of the regions, since their structure was dominated by the service sector. (3) Regions with small technological difference compared to the MNEs, tends to hold the skills and knowledge needed to efficiently exploit the productivity spillovers, hence MNEs influence on regional productivity was greater in these regions than regions with a lower level of technical capability.</p><p> </p>

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of various channels of technology spillovers on local innovative capacity at national and firm level. At national level, the thesis investigates the drivers of Malaysia‟s innovative capacity and the effect of international external sources on innovative capacity. At firm level, this thesis examines the impact of FDI on the innovation progress and studies whether multinational corporations (MNCs) can act as catalysts to stimulate local firms‟ innovation activities in Malaysia. Via a case study analysis at firm level, this thesis focuses on knowledge transfer through backward linkages established between MNCs and their local suppliers. Time series data analysis is conducted to provide empirical evidence of the effect of FDI spillovers on Malaysia‟s innovative capacity at national level. Additionally, a case-study approach is adopted to investigate the impact of vertical FDI spillovers on the innovation performance of local Malaysian firms. The key findings of the study reveal that export-related spillovers are positively associated with Malaysia‟s innovative capacity, whereas importrelated spillovers play a minor role in local innovation. The findings also indicate that there is no significant correlation between economic development and local innovation, which suggests that strong economic growth is not a necessary condition in order for Malaysia to enhance its local innovative capacity. The results suggest that there is strong evidence of the importance of foreign innovation activities to local innovative capacity at national level. In contrast, knowledge spillovers measured by FDI inflows have no significant impact on local innovative capacity. The results showed that FDI might be constrained by the fact that spillovers are more likely to take place through vertical relationships than horizontal relationships. At firm level, the study suggests that knowledge and technology can be diffused through high-quality and standard requirements imposed by MNCs, the assessment and feedback and training programmes offered by MNCs to local suppliers, as well as the production process itself. These results extend ii the existing literature on national innovative capacity and validate earlier theoretical and empirical research on vertical spillovers. The findings from the thesis also have important policy and managerial implications with regard to the impact of FDI on host developing countries.

This paper provides an empirical assessment of whether the world economy has become smaller in terms of economic distance over the last decades. We adopt a cross-sectional spatial econometric approach, relating domestic output volatility to (distance-weighted averages of) other countries' output volatility, using a sample of 135 countries and rolling 10-year time windows over the period 1955 to 2006. Using descriptive measures, test statistics, and spatial econometric estimates, we find that cross-country interdependence was virtually insignificant in the early post-war period but has increased strongly from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s and remained at a high level since then. Results for the most recent period suggest that common shocks to output volatility have a magnified impact and roughly quadruplicate through international spillover effects, which are transmitted through both trade and financial openness.