This paper investigates the commonly debated question about innovations and firm age. Are innovations made by incumbent firms, and does innovation therefore constitute a barrier to entry, or is innovation a way for new firms to successfully compete? The paper further investigates the relationship between firm size and innovation. Does innovation constitute a way for small firms to compete or are innovation a large firm phenomenon? In the analysis the paper explicitly distinguishes between product and process innovation. Data from 1997 and 1999 on product and process R&D, firm size and age in the Swedish manufacturing industry is used in the empirical analysis. A multinomial logit-model is used to estimate the probability of performing process and product R&D. The results show that there are complementarities between product and process R&D and very few firms conduct only process R&D. The probability of product R&D and combined product and process R&D is higher for large firms and firms that are older than 80 years. The size and age effects are more pronounced for firms that carry out both process and product R&D.
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.
Length: 29 pages Date of creation: 18 Oct 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0039
Contact details of provider: Postal: CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: +46 8 790 95 63 Web page: http://www.infra.kth.se/cesis/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Martin Andersson).
References listed on IDEAS 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.:
Acs, Zoltan J & Audretsch, David B, 1989.
"Small-Firm Entry in U.S. Manufacturing,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 56(222), pages 255-65, May.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)