Domestic vs International Spillovers: Evidence from Swedish Firm Level Data

Andreas Poldahl
Additional contact information
Andreas Poldahl: Department of Business, Economics, Statistics and Informatics, Postal: Örebro University, Department of Business, Economics, Statistics and Informatics, SE - 701 82 ÖREBRO, Sweden

No 2004:9, Working Papers from Örebro University, School of Business

Abstract: This paper investigates the association between total factor productivity growth and the R&D expenditures of Swedish manufacturing firms in the presence of domestic- and international R&D spillovers. The paper assumes that the principal channel of transmission of new technology is through I/O relations. Econometric evidence suggests that international as well as domestic inter-industry R&D spillovers are important determinants of firms’ productivity growth in the long run.

The R&D spillovers generated within the industry and following I/O links seem to be of minor importance in explaining productivity growth. It seems likely that within-industry productivity spillovers follow other channels than I/O flows, such as horizontal spillovers through copying of new products and processes, or labour turnover. The use of a convergence parameter is one way to check for such within-industry technology flows.

Our results indicate that a catch-up process exists by which the non-frontier firms in the Swedish manufacturing sector absorb knowledge spillovers from the leading firms in the industry. Finally, a firm’s own R&D efforts are found to be more or less positively correlated with the TFP growth, maybe the contribution from R&D efforts in some sense are underestimated. *

Keywords: TFP growth; R&D expenditures; Convergence; and R&D spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2004-10-14
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
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:hhs:oruesi:2004_009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Örebro University, School of Business Örebro University School of Business, SE - 701 82 ÖREBRO, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().