 European Technology PolicyJonathan Eaton, Eva Gutierrez and Samuel Kortum Boston University - Institute for Economic Development from Boston University, Institute for Economic Development Abstract: European countries do less research than Japan and the United States. We use a quantitative multi-country growth model to ask: (i) Why is this so? (ii) Would there be any benefit to expanding research in Europe? (iii) What various European research promotion policies do? We find that: (i) Europe's lower research effort has more to do with the smaller markets facing European inventors than with lower research productivity. (ii) Europe has substantial research potential in that increased research effort in most European countries generates bigger income benefits there than increased effort in the United States and Japan of equivalent amounts. (iii) Policies to stimulate research in Europe raise productivity not only there but elsewhere. But a problem with pursuing these policies at the national level is the potential for free riding. A second possible problem with promoting research is distributional: While all countries within the European Union benefit, the countries that are already best at doing research, which tend to be the richer members, fare best. The benefits of policies that facilitate the adoption of innovations are more evenly spread. Date: 1998-08 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fth:bosecd:87 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Boston University - Institute for Economic Development from Boston University, Institute for Economic Development Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.