The acknowledged importance of innovation and the increasingly decisive role played by the service sector make innovation an issue of major relevance to the economy. Using a sample of 6593 companies that answered the Community Innovation Survey 2008, we assessed the determinants of innovation of...

Existing illustrations of the learning phenomenon either stress the relationship between flows and stocks, neglecting the chronological time variable, or the speed of knowledge accumulation along time, neglecting the nature of the underlying learning process. In this paper we present a graphical...

We present a unified graphical framework accounting for the nature and impact of spillover effects. The dynamics of the learning process with a specific spillover transfer mechanism can be illustrated by recurring to this four-quadrant picture. In particular, a whole cycle of technological...

Within a debatable framework of ‘natural replication’ of well-succeeded cases such as the Silicon Valley, Route 128, OECD countries have been implementing policy measures directed to the stimulation of the development of regional clusters composed by Technology-Intensive Firms (TIF) around...

The importance of promoting innovation has been elevated up to a status of official standard since the Lisbon European Summit in 2000. Here research and development (R&D) was singled out as an essential element of the foundation on which innovation could be built. R&D has been a growing area of...

In the contemporary globalising knowledge-based economies, local clusters have become crucial elements of regional development, assuming a significant role in both academic and political fields. Although there is an intuitive awareness about the raising importance of the theoretical debate on...

The understanding of the economy's aggregate growth patterns is a fundamental objective of economic growth theorizing. However, the micro constructions are strongly linked to economic growth and so cannot be neglected in such process. This paper is concerned with this problem, proposing a formal...

Studies on the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the Chinese economy have essentially focused on the relationship between FDI, productivity and economic growth, revealing a tendency toward sectoral and macroeconomic empirical studies. This work aims to complement these approaches and...

In the past Portugal managed to grow at a significant rate, but the pace has getting slower and slower from decade to decade, until becoming practically stagnant in the first decade of the 21st century. This stumpy growth together with the current debt crisis has fed the rhetoric of structural...

R&D expenditures made by companies, and governmental policies oriented for the promotion of these expenditures in the private sector, are nowadays considered variables that have an impact on firms’ growth in the medium term. This study aims at understanding the simultaneous influence of R&D...