The competitiveness of the Swiss economy depends in a crucial way on a high level of the firms' innovative activities. In this perspective we compare, first, the innovation performance of the manufacturing sector with other highly developed countries using a whole set of innovation indicators. Secondly, the firms' innovation intensity is analyzed based on a model proposed in industrial economics, which is enhanced by variables depicting firm-specific innovation strategies and location-specific innovation impediments (cross-section analysis at the firm level). This theory-based procedure yields a profile of innovative activity in Switzerland. In assessing the innovation performance and the underlying innovation pattern we take account of some basic structural characteristics of the Swiss economy (size of the country, size structure of the economy, composition of human capital). On the whole, the "Swiss-specific" way of innovating produces very good results when compared to other countries.
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.
Volume (Year): 132 (1996) Issue (Month): III (September) Pages: 335-358 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Did you know? You can import bibliographic info in various formats into you bibliographic tool, or just into your word processor. See under "publisher info" on each abstract page.