ICC Advance Access published online on October 29, 2007
Industrial and Corporate Change, doi:10.1093/icc/dtm033
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Technological regimes and sectoral differences in productivity growth*
The article explores a novel extension of the R&D-productivity literature. It puts forward an empirical model where sectoral productivity growth is related to the characteristics of technological regimes and a set of other industry-specific economic features. The model is estimated on a cross-section of manufacturing industries in nine European countries for the period 1996–2001. The econometric results provide basic support for most of the hypotheses put forward by the model. They show, in particular, that sectoral differences in productivity growth in Europe are related to cross-industry differences in terms of the following main factors: (i) appropriability conditions; (ii) levels of technological opportunities; (iii) education and skill levels; (iv) the degree of openness to foreign competition; and (v) the size of the market.
*A previous draft of the article has been presented at the Second Globelics Conference on Innovation Systems and Development: Emerging Opportunities and Challenges, Beijing, October 18–20, 2004, and at the seminar on Innovation, Path-dependency and Policy, NIFUSTEP, Oslo, November 9, 2004.