Viewing 9 posts categorized under Research and Development
February 27, 2024
Governments worldwide increasingly rely on incentive schemes to promote research and development (R&D) investment, foster innovation, and encourage economic growth. While in 2000, 19 out of the 38 OECD countries gave preferential tax treatment to business R&D expenditure, in 2022 this number increased to 33 countries. What is the effect of (R&D) tax credits on firms’ trajectory? Do firms become more efficient?
Caption: Dynamic marginal effects on R&D-related expenditure from SIFIDE tax credits.
February 6, 2023
Higher education institutions, broadly labelled as ‘universities’, are considered essential actors in the promotion of economic and cultural growth in the modern knowledge society. Often, they are affected by regional stakeholders and are expected to adjust their strategies in order to contribute to technological and economic specialization at the regional level.
Caption: Overall impact of Entrepreneurial University factors on regional competitiveness. A commonly accepted definition of an Entrepreneurial University is that it provides the right environment for researchers to generate, transform and commercialize their knowledge and technology.
August 17, 2021
Technology Balance of Payments (TBP) records the international trade flows of intangibles, namely money flows paid or received for the use of patents, licenses, knowledge, brands, models, designs, industrial research and development (R&D), and technical services, including technical assistance. Thus, the balance of the TBP reflects the ability of a country to sell/ acquire technologies from abroad.
Does a TBP surplus determine the international competitiveness of a country. Such a surplus may increase with a country’s high degree of technological autonomy and a low level of technology imports.
August 4, 2021
Should governments intervene in the promotion of R&D and innovation? Are such policies effective? From a theoretical point of view, the answer to the first question seems consensual. In addition to the benefits from innovation at the firm-level, the fact that derived knowledge and new technologies can be disseminated throughout the economy, gives rise to social benefits that exceed private ones. As such, private R&D investment is usually lower than socially desirable, which justifies public intervention.
April 24, 2021
The extraordinary increase of Chinese exports over the past two decades has represented a new source of competitive pressure for European firms. In this context, innovation and investments in knowledge are considered as a protection against import competition from low-wage countries. Given that wage differences are large and take time to respond, competing on costs is not always a feasible option. This paper examines whether firms in Denmark and Portugal escape import competition through innovation by either internally reallocating their non-R&D workers to R&D jobs, hiring new workers for R&D activities, or doing both.
May 6, 2020
This paper studies total factor productivity (TFP) of the quaternary sector, or knowledge-based activities sector. The occupations associated with this sector are linked with knowledge and social/creative intelligence. These activities are admittedly less likely to be automated in the future due to their human heuristic requirements. A descriptive analysis of a firm-level dataset of Portuguese firms shows that this group of activities differs from others along several characteristics: the share of gross value added, capital per worker, and wage expenses.
May 31, 2019
It is often argued that public policies to support investment and innovation play a vital role when firms have difficulties in accessing external finance. However, several studies have demonstrated that public support can have no effect on the policy targets or even have a negative effect on firm performance. One explanation for these findings could be the selection process to participate in public support programs.
The aim of the article is to assess differences in investment project characteristics (expected impact) between firms with approved and non-approved applications and to understand which kinds of projects are selected for a subsidy.
June 25, 2018
Administrative and regulatory burden reduction has become a priority to improve governmental efficiency and economic competitiveness. Innovations in government through Information Communication Technologies are seen as key tools in designing policies to achieve those goals. Although Portugal has been improving in the business environment and electronic government development indicators and considered a top reformer in some international reports, it is still far from the best-performing countries in several dimensions.
Using a large panel dataset, covering 174 countries from 2004 to 2016, we investigate a possible contribution of innovations in digital governments to facilitate business,and extract implications for Portugal.
June 5, 2018
There are increasing open innovation trends threatening, but also creating opportunities to Portuguese firms. Open innovation includes the systematic encouragement and exploration of a wide range of internal and external sources for innovative opportunities, the integration of this exploration with firm capabilities, and the exploitation of these opportunities through multiple channels.
This study aims to identify the sectors whose firms most engage in open innovation and which sources/agents of innovation are most used.