Metrics of innovation: measuring the Italian gap

Michele Benvenuti (), Luca Casolaro () and Elena Gennari ()
Additional contact information
Luca Casolaro: Banca d'Italia
Elena Gennari: Banca d'Italia

No 168, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: The paper surveys the literature on the measurement of innovation activity and evaluates the position of Italy with respect to the other major European countries. Innovation has been measured from different perspectives: the environment in which firms operate, firms' commitment, its outcome. Both traditional and new measures of innovation are considered, using national accounts and survey data. Italy shows the largest gap for measures related to regulatory frameworks, ICT infrastructure and financial support for innovation expenditure. Italian firms stand out for the low level of inputs, especially R&D expenditure and the presence of graduates. The analysis of expenditure by size shows that, in particular, large Italian firms lag behind in the international comparison. Despite these premises, a relatively large share of Italian firms claim to innovate, even if their R&D expenditure is low. In defending intellectual property rights, firms rely more on industrial designs and trademarks than on patents . Overall, the survey confirms that innovation in Italy is more incremental than based on technology and R&D, therefore less able to increase firms' productivity and overall growth.

Keywords: innovation; R&D; patents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 I25 L20 O30 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-knm and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2013-0168/QEF_168.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Metrics of Innovation: Measuring the Italian Gap (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_168_13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().