Get With the Program: Software-Driven Innovation in Traditional Manufacturing

Lee Branstetter, Matej Drev and Namho Kwon

No 21752, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper documents the increasing importance of software for successful innovation in manufacturing sectors well beyond the traditional definition of electronics and information technology. Using panel data for 229 publicly listed firms from 18 countries across four manufacturing industries over the period 1981-2005, we find significant variation across firms in the software intensity of their innovative activity. Firms that exhibit a higher level of software intensity generate more patents per R&D dollar, and their investment in R&D is more highly valued by equity markets. We present evidence that geographic differences in the abundance of skilled software labor are an important factor in determining sample firms’ software intensity and performance.

JEL-codes: O14 O31 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
Note: ITI PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Get with the Program: Software-Driven Innovation in Traditional Manufacturing Lee G. Branstetter, Matej Drev, and Namho Kwon Management Science , Articles in Advance

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21752.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Get with the Program: Software-Driven Innovation in Traditional Manufacturing (2019)
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:nbr:nberwo:21752

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21752

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().