Imports, Productivity and the Origin Markets -the role of knowledge-intensive economies

Hans Lööf () and Martin Andersson ()

No 146, Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation from Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

Abstract: This paper investigates whether domestic firms’ productivity is an increasing function of imports from the most knowledge intensive economies in the world, i.e. the G7 countries. Using Swedish firm-level data, we confirm an instantaneous causality going from imports to productivity. We also show that productivity is increasing in the G7-fraction of total imports. Our results highlight the importance of import flows from R&D and knowledge intensive economies for productivity and are consistent with imports being a vehicle for technology diffusion. Tests of the sensitivity of the results suggest that G7 imports are particularly important for firms in high-technology sectors and for firms belonging to multinationals and domestic corporations.

Keywords: Technology diffusion; productivity; imports; panel data; GMM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 F14 L10 L60 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-int and nep-knm
Date: 2008-10-13
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0146

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