This paper proposes a way of including in official statistics consumers as user innovators who modify or develop products for their own use. The issue addressed is the role of the market in the definition of innovation in the OECD/Eurostat Oslo Manual and the exclusion by the definition of...

This paper examines the extent to which dependence on primary commodities in Sub-Saharan African(SSA) countries can be explained by low levels of absorptive capacity (the ability to acquire, internalize and utilize knowledge developed elsewhere). We examine the individual and combined effects of...

Evolution of consumers' preferences has been recognized by many scholars as being key to understanding technological change. However, mainstream economics cannot account for the seemingly irrational behavior of consumers based on changes in taste – consumer theory lacks exibility and accuracy...

Evidence on the "funding gap" for investment innovation is surveyed. The focus is on financial market reasons for underinvestment that exist even when externality-induced underinvestment is absent. We conclude that while small and new innovative firms experience high costs of capital that are...

Internationalisation is a useful strategy to gain firm specific advantages during periods of technological discontinuity. The pharmaceutical industry offers us two such episodes as examples: when the antibiotics revolution was beginning and when the possibilities of genetic routes to new drug...

Since 1950, there has been considerable diversity in developing country experiences. Some countries and some regions have experienced rapid growth and catch up, others have fallen behind. At a global level there is an increasing inequality of per capita incomes. However, within the framework of...

The science-technology-innovation system is one that is continuously and rapidly evolving. The dramatic growth over the last twenty years in the use of science, technology and innovation (STI) indicators appears first and foremost the result of a combination between on the one hand the easiness...

This paper examines the importance of local knowledge spillovers for the innovative and economic performance of firms in a developing country context. Theoretical and empirical studies in advanced economies underline the significance of local knowledge spillovers for innovation. However, not...

Conventional models of multinational corporation (MNC) related spillovers in host economies assume that they derive from the technological assets created at the headquarters. Subsidiaries' activities in the host economy are not given any role in this process. In this paper, drawing on recent...

This paper studies the impact of the R&D offshoring of multinational enterprises on the firms in host emerging economies. We develop a two-stage non-cooperative game to analyze the strategic interaction between multinational and host country enterprises engaged in R&D investment. An empirical...