Global trade in agriculture and food products is increasingly governed by an array of standards. A survey conducted in 2010 covering all operational firms in the nascent floriculture industry in Ethiopia revealed that only 36 per cent have managed to acquire certification for international...

Conventionally, standards are considered as a governance tool in the production system in a one-directional and hierarchical relationship between foreign trans-national corporations (TNCs) or global buyers on one hand and subsidiaries and producers on the other. They were considered as...

The product lifecycle model can be understood as a three-stage model of technological development associated with a particular product technology. In the explorative stage many different designs are developed, in the development stage products become standardized into a dominant design, and in...

The use of fiscal policy instruments to stimulate private RD is widespread and important in some countries like Spain. In this paper we explore the effectiveness of RD tax incentives on knowledge capital accumulation in Spanish manufacturing firms using an unbalanced panel and compare the...

This paper provides a novel taxonomy of firms based on specialization versus diversification in production and markets. Firms may choose to specialize on few production activities or alternatively may build expertise in many activities. There is an accompanying decision when firms sell their...

This paper introduces dynamics in the RD to innovation and innovation to productivity relationships, which have mostly been estimated on cross-sectional data. It considers four nonlinear dynamic simultaneous equations models that include individual effects and idiosyncratic errors correlated...

This paper, which was prepared for presentation in the program of the 2013 International Energy Workshop Conference held on 1921 June in Paris, France is an extensively revised, expanded and slightly retitled version of UNUMERIT Working Paper 2013009. The latter paper has been cited in other...

Several studies have highlighted ICT as a driver of firm productivity in developed countries. However, the evidence about the impacts of ICT on services and manufacturing and particularly for developing countries is scarce. This paper focuses on understanding the determinants of investments in...

This paper revisits the competition-innovation relationship using an unbalanced panel of enterprise data stemming from four waves of the Luxembourgish innovation survey for the period 2002-2010. We estimate by full-information maximum likelihood a nonlinear dynamic simultaneous-equations model...

Catching-up, leapfrogging and falling behind in terms of output and productivity in high-tech industries crucially depends on firms ability to keep pace with technological change. In fast changing industries todays specialization does not guarantee tomorrows success as changes in the...