Do Spillovers Stimulate Incremental or Drastic Product Innovations? Hypotheses and Evidence from German Establishment Data

Uwe Jirjahn and Kornelius Kraft

No 06-023, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: We estimate the determinants of various types of product innovation. Knowledge spillovers from rivals have a positive impact on incremental innovations. This impact is largely independent of the participation in R&D cooperations. Spillovers exert no such independent influence on drastic innovation activities. The results support the hypothesis that establishments face difficulties in using knowledge that comes from areas they are not familiar with. Establishments exploit spillovers for incremental innovations rather than for drastic innovations. To a limited degree R&D cooperations can help to overcome the difficulties in using spillovers for drastic innovations. Furthermore, our estimates provide evidence that a firm?s own R&D effort and the use of outside information are substitutive.

Keywords: New Products; Patents; Spillovers; Learning; R&D (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L15 L60 O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-knm, nep-mic and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:4607

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