Innovation and the competitiveness of industries: comparing the mainstream and the evolutionary approaches

Fulvio Castellacci

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The study of the relationships between innovation and the competitiveness of industries is an important topic for both, academic research and economic policy. The huge economics literature flourished in the last couple of decades on the subject broadly falls into two distinct research traditions, namely the mainstream R&D spillovers approach and the evolutionary economics view. Both traditions agree on the important role played by innovation and the intersectoral diffusion of advanced knowledge for the competitive performance of industrial sectors. Behind this general agreement, however, the two approaches are radically different. This paper shows that, at a deeper level of analysis, the mainstream and evolutionary views do indeed differ with respect to their theoretical foundations, empirical research and policy implications. In a nutshell, while the mainstream R&D spillover approach is inspired by a traditional view of economic policy based on a market-oriented approach, the evolutionary view is on the contrary consistent with the idea that institutional arrangements and policy interventions do indeed play a fundamental role for shaping innovation patterns and their impacts on the competitiveness of industries.

Keywords: Innovation; R&D spillovers; competitiveness; innovation policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F0 L0 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27523/1/MPRA_paper_27523.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:27523

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().