This paper investigates the main determinants of the adoption of flexible production technologies (FPTs), using a plant-level dataset of Portuguese manufacturing industry. Besides using a new dataset, this paper extends the framework of previous studies on technology adoption by taking into account the effect of demand uncertainty as an additional determinant of adoption. In order to examine this relationship, several econometric models for count data are estimated. These models deal with the discrete nature of the dependent variable and firm specific unobservable characteristics arising from the cross-section context. The main findings of the paper are: (i) rank effects and technological regimes are important determinants of technology adoption, as put forward in previous models of technology diffusion; (ii) demand uncertainty has a significant positive impact on the likelihood of adopting FPTs, which suggests that technological heterogeneity is important when modelling firms' investment decisions; (iii) the estimates were improved after controlling for excess zeros and overdispersion that characterizes our data. Copyright 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 28 (2003) Issue (Month): 1 (January) Pages: 63-79 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)