In search of lost disincentive effect from intra-industry spillovers

Stéphane Lhuillery ()
Additional contact information
Stéphane Lhuillery: Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation, Collège du Management de la Technologie, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

CEMI Working Papers from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Collège du Management de la Technologie, Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship Institute, Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation

Abstract: Standard innovation surveys do not consider incoming spillovers for non-innovative firms. The Swiss innovation surveys presented here measure the importance of competitors' knowledge for both innovating and noninnovating firms. This original feature not only enables us to accurately identify the role of incoming knowledge on R&D decisions and innovation output, but also to compare resulting data with those which standard innovation questionnaires provide. Using a panel data over four periods, we show that knowledge from rivals actually deters manufacturing firms from engaging in R&D activities. Moreover, we provide stronger evidence that intra-industry spillovers are more detrimental to innovation than that generally provided by data from standard surveys. The results suggest that the dominance of the absorptive capacity effect is more important to firms investing in R&D and that non-innovative firms rely more heavily than expected on their competitors to maintain their technological capacities.

Keywords: intra-industry spillovers; absorption; innovation survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 C81 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-mic and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cdm-repec.epfl.ch/cmi-wpaper/cemi-workingpaper-2009-005.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:cmi:wpaper:cemi-workingpaper-2009-005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEMI Working Papers from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Collège du Management de la Technologie, Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship Institute, Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julio Raffo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).