Knowledge-intensive services and international competitiveness: a four country comparison

Paul Windrum () and Mark Tomlinson
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Mark Tomlinson: MERIT

No 23, Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: The nature and consequences of services innovation remains a woefully under-researchedtopic. The paper calls into question two statements that are frequentlyrepeated in the political-economic discourse on services. The first concerns thesuggestion that Germany is a ‘services laggard’ that needs to restructure its domesticeconomy if it is to remain internationally competitive. By contrast, the UK is frequentlyheld up as an example of a successfully restructured ‘services economy’. The paperdraws an important distinction between the quantity of services in a domestic economyand the degree of connectivity between services and other economic activities. Thelatter, it is argued, is far more important in determining the size of spillovers fromservices innovation enjoyed within a domestic economy and, hence, to internationalcompetitiveness. Particular attention is paid to the role and impact of knowledge-intensiveservice sectors in this regard. In addition to the UK and Germany, data isdrawn from the Netherlands and Japan. Using these four comparative cases we explorethe distinction between a high representation of services in the domestic economy, andthe innovation spillovers facilitated by a high degree of connectivity between servicesand other economic sectors within a domestic economy.

Keywords: economic development an growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

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