IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/growch/v35y2004i4p434-455.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From R&D to Innovation and Economic Growth in the EU

Author

Listed:
  • Beñat Bilbao‐Osorio
  • Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the last two decades many European governments have pursued ambitious research and development (R&D) policies with the aim of fostering innovation and economic growth in peripheral regions of Europe. The question is whether these policies are paying off. Arguments such as the need to reach a minimum threshold of research, the existence of important distance decay effects in the diffusion of technological spillovers, the presence of increasing returns to scale in R&D investments, or the unavailability of the necessary socio‐economic conditions in these regions to generate innovation seem to cast doubts about the possible returns of these sort of policies. This paper addresses this question. A two‐step analysis is used in order to first identify the impact of R&D investment of the private, public, and higher education sectors on innovation (measured as the number of patent applications per million population). The influence of innovation and innovation growth on economic growth is then addressed. The results indicate that R&D investment, as a whole, and higher education R&D investment in peripheral regions of the EU, in particular, are positively associated with innovation. The existence and strength of this association are, however, contingent upon region‐specific socio‐economic characteristics, which affect the capacity of each region to transform R&D investment into innovation and, eventually, innovation into economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Beñat Bilbao‐Osorio & Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose, 2004. "From R&D to Innovation and Economic Growth in the EU," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 434-455, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:growch:v:35:y:2004:i:4:p:434-455
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2257.2004.00256.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2257.2004.00256.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1468-2257.2004.00256.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rachel Griffith & Stephen Redding & John Van Reenen, 2004. "Mapping the Two Faces of R&D: Productivity Growth in a Panel of OECD Industries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(4), pages 883-895, November.
    2. T. W. Swan, 1956. "ECONOMIC GROWTH and CAPITAL ACCUMULATION," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 334-361, November.
    3. Frank R. Lichtenberg, 1992. "R&D Investment and International Productivity Differences," NBER Working Papers 4161, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Rodriguez-Pose, Andres, 1998. "Dynamics of Regional Growth in Europe: Social and Political Factors," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198233831, December.
    5. Scott Stern & Michael E. Porter & Jeffrey L. Furman, 2000. "The Determinants of National Innovative Capacity," NBER Working Papers 7876, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bulent Guloglu & R. Tekin, 2012. "A Panel Causality Analysis of the Relationship among Research and Development, Innovation, and Economic Growth in High-Income OECD Countries," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 2(1), pages 32-47, June.
    2. Peter Howitt, 2004. "Endogenous Growth, Productivity and Economic Policy: A Progress Report," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 8, pages 3-15, Spring.
    3. Mario Coccia, 2018. "Optimization in R&D intensity and tax on corporate profits for supporting labor productivity of nations," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 792-814, June.
    4. Jakob B. Madsen* & Md. Rabiul Islam, 2012. "The Anatomy of the Asian Take-off," Institutions and Economies (formerly known as International Journal of Institutions and Economies), Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, vol. 4(2), pages 1-24, July.
    5. Florent Silve & Alexander Plekhanov, 2018. "Institutions, innovation and growth : Evidence from industry data," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 26(3), pages 335-362, July.
    6. Wolfgang Keller, 2002. "Geographic Localization of International Technology Diffusion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 120-142, March.
    7. Dominique Guellec & Bruno Van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2004. "From R&D to Productivity Growth: Do the Institutional Settings and the Source of Funds of R&D Matter?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 66(3), pages 353-378, July.
    8. Andreas Savvides & Marios Zachariadis, 2005. "International Technology Diffusion and the Growth of TFP in the Manufacturing Sector of Developing Economies," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(4), pages 482-501, November.
    9. Katherine Wynn & Mingji Liu & Jasmine Cohen, 2022. "Quantifying the economy‐wide returns to innovation for Australia," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(3), pages 591-614, September.
    10. Lopez-Rodriguez, Jesus & Martinez-Lopez, Diego, 2017. "Looking beyond the R&D effects on innovation: The contribution of non-R&D activities to total factor productivity growth in the EU," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 37-45.
    11. Capolupo, Rosa, 2009. "The New Growth Theories and Their Empirics after Twenty Years," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-72.
    12. Neil Foster-McGregor, 2012. "Innovation and Technology Transfer across Countries," wiiw Research Reports 380, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    13. Edwin Goni & William F. Maloney, 2014. "Why don’t Poor Countries do R&D?," Documentos CEDE 11947, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    14. Markus Eberhardt & Christian Helmers & Hubert Strauss, 2013. "Do Spillovers Matter When Estimating Private Returns to R&D?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 436-448, May.
    15. Erdemalp Ozden & Didem Guleryuz, 2022. "Optimized Machine Learning Algorithms for Investigating the Relationship Between Economic Development and Human Capital," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 60(1), pages 347-373, June.
    16. Young Eun Kim & Norman V. Loayza, 2019. "Productivity Growth: Patterns and Determinants across the World," Revista Economía, Fondo Editorial - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, vol. 42(84), pages 36-93.
    17. Mr. Philip R. Gerson, 1998. "The Impact of Fiscal Policy Variables on Output Growth," IMF Working Papers 1998/001, International Monetary Fund.
    18. Hugo Erken & Piet Donselaar & Roy Thurik, 2018. "Total factor productivity and the role of entrepreneurship," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 43(6), pages 1493-1521, December.
    19. Roth,Felix & Thum, Anna-Elisabeth, 2010. "Does intangible capital affect economic growth?," CEPS Papers 3667, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    20. Sabine D’Costa & Jose Enrique Garcilazo & Joaquim Oliveira Martins, 2019. "Impact of macro‐structural reforms on the productivity growth of regions: Distance to the frontier matters," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 98(1), pages 133-166, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:growch:v:35:y:2004:i:4:p:434-455. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0017-4815 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.