Innovation, exports and technical efficiency in Spain

The main purpose of this work is to analyse the effect of exports intensity and R & D activities in technical efficiency using data of Spanish manufacturing firms during the period 2004-2009. In a previous work, Diaz and Sanchez (2008) found that size was an important determinant of technical efficiency. Also, in Sánchez and Díaz (2013) innovation was an important determinant of efficiency for large firms but not for small and medium sized firms. Perhaps because large firms are more easily able to obtain external financing and thus finance their R & D activities and obtain product and process innovation that allows them to gain competitiveness in foreign markets. Size is also related to the ability of firms to compete in foreign markets. So we will focus on exporting companies to investigate the relationship between exports, and efficiency. As it is well known the exporting firms are more competitive than those that are not focused on foreign markets. To obtain empirical evidence we estimate a value added production function following the methodology of the Stochastic Frontier Approach, first developed by Farrell (1957) and widely used in empirical works. Using this methodology several works have analysed technical inefficiency: Caves and Barton (1990) analyse technical efficiency for manufacturing firms in United States; Green and Mayes (1991) analyse technical inefficiency for United Kingdom; and Patibandla (1998) proves the relevance of capital market imperfections on the structure of an industry; Dilling-Hansen et al. (2003), and Kumbhakar et al., (2011) analyse the effect of R&D investment on relative efficiency; Diaz and Sánchez (2008) analyse the impact of size on efficiency; and Sánchez and Diaz (2013) focus in the effect of product and process innovation over technical efficiency, obtaining that large firms’ innovation are more efficient than the small one. The inefficiency determinants can be due to environmental or firm specific factors. Here we focus on these firms specific factors to provide an explanation to the differences in technical inefficiency across Spanish manufacturing firms. Inefficiency tends to be smaller for firms with a higher ratio of gross investment over capital. Firms that account for this kind of investment become more competitive as a consequence of having a higher efficiency in their production process. Also, we found that exporting firms are closer to the stochastic frontier. They have to be more competitive to sell in international markets. Only the most efficient firms survive in the highly competitive international market. Size is another determinant of technical efficiency. Even though the impact of size in technical efficiency is not clearly determined in empirical and theoretical frameworks, here we obtain a positive and significant effect over efficiency. What it means that large firms are closer to the efficient frontier. In addition, efficiency tends to be smaller for those firms with a higher proportion of external funds over value added.