We review the literature on national innovation systems. We first focus on the emergence of the concept of innovation systems, reviewing its historical origins and three main flavours (associated to three "founding fathers" of the concept). After this, we discuss how the notion of innovation...

This paper discusses the possibility of a spatial hierarchy of innovation and growth dynamics in Europe. A spatial hierarchy is understood as a geographical clustering of regions, where important differences exist in terms of innovation and growth dynamics between the clusters. The literature on...

The aim of the paper is to assess heterogeneity of the innovation process. Using exploratory factor analysis on micro data from the third Community Innovation Survey in 13 countries, we identify four factors that that can be interpreted as research, user, external and production ingredients of...

Firms increasingly rely upon external actors for their innovation process. Interaction with these actors may occur formally (i.e. through a collaboration agreement) or informally (i.e. external actors acts as sources of knowledge). This paper analyses the reasons why firms consider it to be...

We estimate the diffusion of micro cogeneration systems (MiCoGen) using hydrogen produced from natural gas in the Netherlands for the 2000-2050 period on the basis of economical factors. The diffusion is important for the transition to a hydrogen economy based on renewables, with natural gas...

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...

Is innovation important for development? And if so, how? One popular perception of innovation, that one meets in media every day, is that has to do with developing brand new, advanced solutions for sophisticated, well-off customers, through exploitation of the most recent advances in knowledge....

We investigate technological change with regard to CO2 emissions by passenger cars, using a Free Disposal Hull methodology to estimate technological frontiers. We have a sample of cars available in the UK market in the period 2000 – 2007. Our results show that the rates of technological change...

Italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their European competitors. This paper presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms' productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor...

We take a first look at financial patents at the European Patent Office (EPO). As is the case at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the number of financial patents in Europe has increased significantly in parallel with significant changes in payment and financial systems. Scholars have...