AbstractWe investigate whether firm performance is related to the accumulated stock of technological knowledge associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and, if so, whether the firm’s history in 4IR technology development affects such a relationship. We exploit a rich longitudinal matched patent-firm data set on the population of large firms that filed 4IR patents at the European Patent

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic illustrated the inability of the market to meet the needed production scale and speed of essential medical products. The state should adopt a risk-based approach, allowing for experimentation with various technological solutions such as vaccines and tests, while ramping up their production. The intervention should resolve uncertainty, combine resources

Our paper shows how Charles P. Kindleberger examined the function of the international lender of last resort and anticipated the rules governing the dollar swap line program (with unlimited amounts and at a fixed price) implemented by the Federal Reserve in the aftermath of the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. We systematically explore Kindleberger’s works on the central bank swap agreement

Given the sizeable amount of public investments in venture capital (VC) in many countries, an emerging empirical literature investigates the impact of government venture funds on firm performance. We reassess the key findings of this literature using a new database on innovative start-ups and VC investments, which is unprecedented for granularity and comprehensiveness and covers a longer, more recent

This is an Introduction to the ICC Special Section on "Economic Catch-up by Latecomers" in which the main themes are discussed and the papers of the Special Section are presented. Some general considerations close the Introduction.

This paper presents a firm-level examination of the European Union (EU) vs US research and development (R&D) intensity differences based on four pictures taken during the time span 2005–2017. It contributes to the literature on the topic by inspecting for the first time which sectors and firms account the most for the aggregate R&D intensity performance of these two economies. Analyzing the top 1250 R&D

With the advent of Industry 4.0, technological interdependence is becoming increasingly important in the delineation of technological development dynamics. In the present paper, we propose an extension of the theory of technological paradigms conceptualizing the role of technological interdependence in the emergence of paradigms and the coevolution of the corresponding trajectories. We corroborate

Exploring the initial diffusion of innovation, this article investigates how early adopters reach a tipping point with a shared and emphatic preference for atypical products. In a community of enthusiasts where members mutually observes each other, we show that potential buyers are reluctant to express a preference for highly atypical products despite their vanguard positive attitude toward atypicality

We study how prior operating experience interacts with observational learning to exert paradoxical effects on market entry. When a new market disrupts a firm’s standing routines, greater operating experience with these routines complicates adaptation and increases the firm’s uncertainty about the feasibility of entering, thereby delaying its entry. Yet, this entry uncertainty simultaneously prompts

AbstractWe compare individuals engaged in online crowdwork against workers in traditional occupations from the United States and Europe, investigating the determinants of access into crowd employment and the nature of the deterioration of salary conditions and job quality characterizing these markets. We do so by matching responses from comparable working conditions surveys, and controlling for most

Major epidemics of the last two decades (SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola, and Zika) have been followed by increases in inequality [Furceri et al. (2020), COVID Economics, 12, 138–157]. In this article, we show that the extent of fiscal consolidation in the years following the onset of these pandemics has played an important role in determining the extent of the increase in inequality. Episodes marked by extreme

This study has compared the technological regimes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the Third Industrial Revolution (3IR) technologies. If we limit the comparison based on absolute values representing diverse elements of the technological regime, 4IR technologies are more original and science-based and have a longer technological cycle time (TCT). However, all these differences turn insignificant

This study investigates (i) differences in knowledge intermediation strategies among knowledge and technology transfer organizations (KTTOs) and (ii) the factors that explain such differences. It uses data from 212 Canadian KTTOs. When knowledge delivery capacity (KDC) and knowledge integration capacity (KIC) dimensions of knowledge intermediation are simultaneously accounted for, four categories of

In the last decades, work flexibility emerged as a key requirement firms must meet to face volatile markets and highly differentiated product demand. This article compares two alternative approaches to strengthen work flexibility: internal flexibility, that is, practices that focus on the employees’ ability to perform a variety of highly qualified tasks in a context of stable employment relationships;

This paper proposes an evolutionary view of economic catch-up by latecomers, considered as a long-run process of closing the gap in capabilities by promoting learning and innovation in interaction with innovation systems (national, sectoral or regional). According to this perspective, catch-up is viewed as a dynamic evolutionary process which is not deterministic and cannot be planned in details because

This study draws attention to the embedding process of market entrants, by examining the initial and subsequent partnerships of de alio entrants versus de novo entrants. Although de alio entrants have access to superior resources from their parents, they may encounter more resistance from the market as they project impure identity, introduce different logics, and pose greater competitive threats. Analyzing

Focusing on a sample of 22 industries and 22 OECD countries and controlling for a full set of year-, industry-, and country fixed effects (and their interactions), we first show that intellectual property rights (IPRs) protection, by means of both constitutional provisions and ordinary laws, is positively associated with the dynamics industry-level labor productivity. Disentangling the impact of constitutional

This article investigates whether companies with a higher payout ratio make fewer investments, to evaluate how firms make their decisions about corporate value creation. Furthermore, it examines how this yearning for dividends and the corresponding earning distribution affect the value creation for the shareholders in the long term. The findings show that companies with a higher level of dividends

AbstractA major concern in the current public discussion is rapidly accelerating automation and in particular the use of robots. Many experts and researchers see it as a driver of employment losses hitting in particular so called routine jobs. The present study challenges this perspective. It examines two central questions: First, what approaches to automation and digitalization have been pursued in

AbstractWhereas most collaboration-based innovation policies aim at fostering efficient ecosystems of innovation, evaluations of the behavioral impact of such policies remain few and far between. Relying on external-to-the-policy network data to build a counterfactual approach, this article addresses three main evaluation issues: do cluster policies make firms more collaborative? Do they encourage

The “sailing-ship effect” is the process whereby improvements to an incumbent technology (e.g. sail) are intentionally sought as a new competing technology (steam) emerges. Despite the fact that the effect has been referred to by quite a few scholars in different technological battles, the effect itself seems to have been taken for granted rather than organically defined and investigated. In this paper

This article examines the effectiveness of the French cluster policy on R&D and innovation in terms of the economic performance of participating SMEs. Based on an original dataset, we built different measures of treatment and extended the DiD methodology to a multiple overlapping treatments approach. Joining a cluster’s association allows firms to benefit from low-cost animation actions and common

The article explores the discussions among economic modelers and central banks research staff and decision makers, namely on the adequacy of unconventional monetary policy and fiscal expansionary measures after the subprime crisis and as the COVID recession is developing. First, the article investigates the arguments, models and policy proposals of several mainstream schools of economics that challenged

The fourth industrial revolution challenges the existing understanding of innovation and upgrading in the global economy. It blurs traditional sectoral boundaries based on distinctive products and technologies and calls into question a traditional global value chain (GVC) perspective, which, similar to the sectoral systems of innovation approach, examines innovation and upgrading from a sector-based

AbstractThe world is in the early stages of a paradigm transition toward a global green economy. In this article, we propose the notion of green windows of opportunity, highlighting the importance of institutional changes in the creation of new opportunities for latecomer development. We emphasize how demand and mission-guided technical change influence the directionality of latecomer development and

AbstractOliver Williamson’s contributions to many subfields of economics are salutary. However, he was recognized by the Nobel Laureate Committee primarily for his work on the boundaries (scale and scope) of the firm. This tribute endeavors to marry Williamson’s transaction cost economics with a capabilities framework to obtain new insights into how the scope and scale of technology companies influence

The sectoral system framework has been adopted to study innovation and industrial dynamics in a wide range of sectors. However, recent development of the so-called “fourth industrial revolution” technologies, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, additive manufacturing, advanced robotics, Internet of Things, smartphones, and autonomous vehicles, has been blurring the boundaries of existing

Technological revolutions mark profound transformations in socio-economic systems. They are associated with the development and diffusion of general-purpose technologies (GPTs) that display very high degrees of pervasiveness, dynamism and complementarity. This article provides an in-depth examination of the technologies underpinning the “factory of the future” as profiled by the Industry 4.0 paradigm

This article investigates the impact of the worker flows of a firm on productivity by using unique longitudinal matched employer–employee data. The analysis has split a firm’s total worker flows into three components: workers’ replacements (excess worker flows), hirings introduced to increase the firm’s employment level (net hirings), and separations of workers intended to decrease the firm’s workforce

Online communities have emerged as important organizational forms, but there are many gaps in our understanding. In particular, researchers have mainly focused on individual-level drivers of behaviors in communities, while downplaying (formal, informal) context at various levels. We theorize that different dimensions of context (i.e. omnibus and discrete context) influence decision-making in online

In this article, we examine the impact of cluster externalities on the economic performance of firms. Specifically, we focus on how the utilization of these externalities by firms is affected by the macroeconomic instability caused by the recessionary shock of 2008/2009 and on how the impact of the crisis affects firms with different combinative capabilities. Using data from more than 16,000 manufacturing