African countries lag clearly behind developed countries when it comes to accumulating technological capabilities, upgrading and catching up. Also, firms in least developed countries are characterised by very low levels of absorptive capacity. It is therefore crucial to understand how this...

This study investigates the determinants of R&D expenditures in the Swedish pharmaceutical industry from the 1960s to the mid 1990s. Various proxies for the rate of return of R&D (e.g. expected profit, sales and R&D productivity) as well as the availability of internal funding (proxied by past...

The focus in this paper is on industrial dynamics and its impact on energy systems.. We highlight some fundamental patterns of this long-term dynamics, using the Dahmenian concept ‘development blocks’, with ‘market widening’ and ‘market suction’, and discuss the implications for...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

Advancements in the areas of Information Technologies (IT) and the New Life Sciences (NLS) are helping redefine the boundaries of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Although the fast growth of these technological areas may very well be fueled by the existence of the IPR system itself, in...

Investments in R&D and agricultural innovations have been fundamental to long-term economic growth worldwide. But global resource allocation has been uneven, with some developing countries closing in on developed-world scientific capacities, others regaining ground lost over the past decade or...

Innovative activities often are heavily regulated. Reviews conducted by administrative agencies take time and are not perfectly accurate. Of particular concern is whether, by design or not, such agencies discriminate against more important innovations by taking more time to perform their...

This paper discusses how to improve Canada’s business innovation in order to boost labour productivity and output growth. Many general framework conditions are highly favourable to business risk-taking and innovation, including macro stability, openness, strong human capital, low corporate tax...

This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the determination of firms’ and industries’ innovative activity and performance, highlighting the questions addressed, the approaches adopted, impediments to progress in the field, and research opportunities. We review the...

The present volume aims to provide a comprehensive and systemic overview of the challenges that going global poses to knowledge based economies. Its focus is four-fold. 1) Firstly, it investigates why companies, especially high-tech firms, go global, i.e. which are the drivers that push...