Absorptive Capacity and Frontier Technology: Evidence from OECD Manufacturing Industries

Philip Stevens and Richard Kneller

No 193, Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 from Royal Economic Society

Abstract: This paper investigates whether differences in absorptive capacity help to explain cross-country differences in the level of productivity. We utilise stochastic frontier analysis to investigate two potential sources of this inefficiency: differences in human capital and R&D for nine industries in twelve OECD countries over the period 1973-92. We find that inefficiency in production does indeed exist and it depends upon the level of human capital of the countryÕs workforce.Evidence that the amount of R&D an industry undertakes is also important is less robust. Classification- JEL: O3, O4

Keywords: absorptive capacity; human capital; R&D; SFA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-eec and nep-ino
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.org/res2003/Stevens.pdf full text

Related works:
Working Paper: Absorptive Capacity and Frontier Technology: Evidence from OECD Manufacturing Industries (2002)
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:ecj:ac2003:193

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().