Intellectual Property Rights, Appropriation Instruments and Innovation Activities: Evidence from Tunisian Firms

This paper documents the relationship between appropriation instruments and the innovation activity and other determinants of the innovation behavior of firms in Tunisia. It focuses on studying the factors that determine the appropriation of innovation results like the value of sales of the firms, networking, science-industry linkage, competitive pressure and demand pull. To this end, we propose an econometric analysis of various hypotheses tested in a sample of 586 Tunisian firms. We find significant interaction effects between appropriability and R&D activity. The results confirm that patenting is primarily driven by firm-level factors, not by industry affiliation. Access to external knowledge and firm\'s specific characteristics are the most factors linked to the innovation protection. Firms that use appropriation instruments have a higher probability of investing in R&D than the other ones. Indeed, the capability to integrate external knowledge and performing R&D (networking, science-industry linkage, cooperation with other firms, belonging to a group) is related to the use of appropriation instruments.