Innovation and export activities in the German mechanical engineering sector: an application of testing restrictions in production analysis

Since Solow (Q J Econ 70:65–94, 1956) the economic literature has widely accepted innovation and technological progress as the central drivers of long-term economic growth. From the microeconomic perspective, this has led to the idea that the growth effects on the macroeconomic level should be reflected in greater competitiveness of the firms. Although innovation effort does not always translate into greater competitiveness, it is recognized that innovation is, in an appropriate sense, unique and differs from other inputs like labor or capital. Nonetheless, often this uniqueness is left unspecified. We analyze two arguments rendering innovation special, the first related to partly non-discretionary innovation input levels and the second to the induced increase in the firm’s competitiveness on the global market. Methodologically the analysis is based on restriction tests in non-parametric frontier models, where we use and extend tests proposed by Simar and Wilson (Commun Stat Simul Comput 30(1):159–184, 2001; J Prod Anal, forthcoming, 2010). The empirical data is taken from the German Community Innovation Survey 2007 (CIS 2007), where we focus on mechanical engineering firms. Our results are consistent with the explanation of the firms’ inability to freely choose the level of innovation inputs. However, we do not find significant evidence that increased innovation activities correspond to an increase in the ability to serve the global market.

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Document type	Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Access type	Accès restreint
Publication date	2011
Language	Anglais
Journal information	"Journal of Productivity Analysis" - Vol. 36, no. 1, p. 55-69 (2011)
Peer reviewed	yes
Publisher	Springer New York LLC ((United States) New York)
issn	0895-562X
e-issn	1573-0441
Publication status	Publié
Affiliations	UCL - SSH/LIDAM/ISBA - Institut de Statistique, Biostatistique et Sciences Actuarielles Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI
Links	http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/95929[Handle] https://doi.org/10.1007/s11123-010-0199-6[DOI]

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See also
	[boreal:123400]	Innovation and export activities in the German mechanical engineering sector: an application of testing restrictions in production analysis