Firm-Level Innovations in an Emerging Economy: Do Perceived Policy Instability and Legal Institutional Conditions Matter?

Samuel Kwesi Dunyo and Samuel Amponsah Odei ()
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Samuel Kwesi Dunyo: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nakhon Sawan Rajabhat University, Nakhon Sawan 60000, Thailand
Samuel Amponsah Odei: Department of Economics, University of Hradec Králové, 50003 Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-24

Abstract: Innovation has become a key factor of production, driving and sustaining firms’ productivity and competitiveness. Despite the growing importance attached to innovations, existing studies have produced different results on the factors driving firm-level innovations. This study investigates the factors driving innovations in the service and manufacturing sector firms in Thailand. The study tests proposed hypotheses using cross-sectional data on a sample of 613 firms from the World Bank enterprise survey of 2016. Our empirical results show that specific aspects of the business environment, such as policy instability, legal institutions, corruption, and informal competition, negatively influence non-technological innovations. Contrarily, we find that formal training, foreign technology licenses, research and development have marginal and additionality effects that positively enhance both technological and non-technological innovations. We provide practical implications for firm managers and policymakers in Thailand on adaptive measures to improve the business environment to make it conducive for firm-level innovations.

Keywords: technological innovations; non-technological innovations; business environment; corruption; legal institutions; foreign technology licenses; Thailand; L62; 030; 031; 036; P37; P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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