Determinants of Foreign Technological Activity in German Regions – A Count Model Analysis of Transnational Patents
Eva Dettmann, Iciar Dominguez Lacasa, Jutta Günther, Björn Jindra
Foresight-Russia,
No. 1,
2014
Abstract
Most research on R&D internationalisation focuses on comparative analysis of location factors at the national level of analysis. Very little work, however, has taken place in this field for the sub-national regional location behavior of multi-national enterprises (MNE). The paper contributes to the existing research by providing evidence on the determinants of foreign technological activities at the sub-national level for Germany, which hosts the largest share of foreign R&D within the EU27 and features the highest cross-regional dispersion of patented research. Using a pooled count data model, we estimate the effect of various sources for externalities on the extent of foreign technological activity across regions. Particular attention is paid to the role of local knowledge spillovers, technological specialization and diversification. We differentiate foreign and domestic sources of specialisation and account for region and sector-specific influences. This is the first time that the ‘cross-border-ownership’ principle to measure R&D internationalisation is combined with regionalised patent information.
To verify our findings we develop hypotheses. In particular, we expect and find that foreign technological activity is attracted by technologically specialised sectors of regions. In contrast to current empirical work, this effect applies both to foreign as well as domestic sources of specialization, although effects on foreign specialization seem more significant. We expect and find the same for science-industry spillovers. We postulate a negative impact of domestic specialization on foreign technological activities and a strong positive effect from diversificationspillovers, by comparison with specialisation spillovers, but these hypotheses are rejected. We find that the direction of the specialisation effect depends on dominance in the position of domestic firms as well as on the balance of knowledge flows between them and foreign actors.
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Technological Activities in CEE Countries: A Patent Analysis for the Period 1980-2009
Iciar Dominguez Lacasa, Alexander Giebler
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 2,
2014
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze the technological activities of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies and to compare them with the technological activities of other world regions. Using data from the EPO World Wide Statistical Database for the period 1980-2009 the analysis is based on counts of priority patent applications over time. In terms of priority patent applications, CEE reduced its technological activities drastically in absolute and per capita terms after 1990. The level of priority patent applications in this world region maintained more recently a stable level below the performance of EU15, South EU and the former USSR. In what concerns technological specialization, the results suggest a division of labor in technological activities among world regions where Europe, Latin America and the former USSR are mainly specializing in sectors losing technological dynamism in the global patent activities (Chemicals and/or Mechanical Engineering) while North America, the Middle East (especially Israel) and Asia Pacific are increasingly specializing in Electrical Engineering, a sector with strong technological opportunities.
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The Social Capital Legacy of Communism-results from the Berlin Wall Experiment
Peter Bönisch, Lutz Schneider
European Journal of Political Economy,
No. 32,
2013
Abstract
In this paper we establish a direct link between the communist history, the resulting structure of social capital, and attitudes toward spatial mobility. We argue that the communist regime induced a specific social capital mix that discouraged geographic mobility even after its demise. Theoretically, we integrate two branches of the social capital literature into one more comprehensive framework distinguishing an open type and a closed type of social capital. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) we take advantage of the natural experiment that separated Germany into two parts after the WWII to identify the causal effect of social capital on mobility. We estimate a three equation ordered probit model and provide strong empirical evidence for our theoretical propositions.
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Delineation of City Regions Based on Commuting Interrelations: The Example of Large Cities in Germany
Albrecht Kauffmann
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 4,
2012
Abstract
The comparison of cities with regard to their economic or demographic development may yield misleading results, if solely the cities in their administrative borders are the object of consideration. Frequently, historical borders of cities neither conform to the contemporary settlement structures, nor do they consider the mutual dependencies between cities and parts of their hinterland. Therefore, it is often claimed to use city regions as objects of comparison or for the sake of urban planning. Commonly, the delineation of functional regions is based on commuting flows from the municipalities in the hinterland of the core cities directed to the cores. A municipality is regarded as belonging to a certain city region if the share of out-commuters from this municipality to the respective core in the total mass of those employees who reside in that municipality is the largest one, and if this share exceeds a certain threshold value. However, commuting flows in the opposite direction are not considered. The method presented here delineates city regions on the base of bidirectional commuting flows. Hereby, various modifications regarding the characteristics of the employment base, the possibility of overlaps of regions, the formation of polycentric city regions, and of the minimum threshold value of mutual connectivity are applied to the sample of 81 German cities with more than 100 000 inhabitants. Finally, the effects of different kinds of regionalisation on the coefficients of regional specialisation of these cities and city regions are demonstrated.
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The Internationalization of Science and Its Influence on Academic Entrepreneurship
S. Krabel, D. S. Siegel, Viktor Slavtchev
Journal of Technology Transfer,
No. 2,
2012
Abstract
We examine whether scientists employed in foreign countries and foreign-educated native researchers are more “entrepreneurial” than their “domestic” counterparts. We conjecture that foreign-born and foreign-educated scientists possess broader scientific skills and social capital, which increases their likelihood that they will start their own companies. To test this hypothesis we analyze comprehensive data from researchers at the Max Planck Society in Germany. Our findings provide strong support for the conjecture that academic entrepreneurship can be stimulated by facilitating the mobility of scientists across countries.
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Regionale Unterschiede der Kooperationsmuster der deutschen Photovoltaik-Industrie
Christoph Hornych
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 12,
2011
Abstract
Der Beitrag analysiert das Kooperationsgeschehen in der deutschen Photovoltaik-Industrie. Ausgehend von den theoretischen Vorteilen, die Kooperationen in stadt- und regionalökonomischen Ansätzen zugeschrieben werden, wird geprüft, inwieweit die tatsächlich bestehenden Kooperationsmuster in den verschiedenen Bundesländern den aus theoretischer Sicht günstigen Kooperationsmustern entsprechen. Hierzu erfolgt eine vergleichende Beschreibung der Kooperationsstrukturen der Industrie in und zwischen den einzelnen Bundesländern. Die Untersuchung basiert auf der „IWH-Unternehmensdatenbank Photovoltaik“, die u. a. Informationen zu den Kooperationsbeziehungen zwischen den in der Datenbank enthaltenen Unternehmen und öffentlichen Forschungseinrichtungen enthält. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sich die Kooperationsintensitäten in und zwischen den Bundesländern deutlich voneinander unterscheiden. Dabei sind insbesondere die mitteldeutschen Bundesländer Sachsen, Sachsen- Anhalt und Thüringen durch eine starke gegenseitige und deutschlandweite Vernetzung gekennzeichnet. Hingegen sind die Akteure in der Region Berlin-Brandenburg, die ähnlich wie Mitteldeutschland durch eine hohe
Konzentration an Photovoltaikunternehmen gekennzeichnet ist, deutlich weniger in Netzwerkstrukturen eingebunden.
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Political Institutionalisation and Governance of the German Metropolitan Regions: A Comparative Study
Peter Franz
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 11,
2011
Abstract
Mit der Bildung von Metropolregionen versuchen Städte und Kreise auf Anforderungen des globalen Standortwettbewerbes zu reagieren. Damit zeichnen sich neue Formen großflächiger interkommunaler Kooperation ab. In Deutschland sind in raumentwicklungspolitischer Absicht elf solcher Metropolregionen definiert und Anstöße zu ihrer Konstituierung gegeben worden. Um ihre politische Institutionalisierung bemühen sich die regionalen Akteure mit unterschiedlichem Erfolg, schlagen dabei aber zum Teil ähnliche Wege ein. In der vorliegenden
Studie werden die deutschen Metropolregionen mit Hilfe eines Stufenmodells der politischen Institutionalisierung diesbezüglich miteinander verglichen. Dabei wird auch der Einfluss intervenierender Faktoren wie der poly- bzw. monozentrischen Siedlungsstruktur sowie der Existenz von Ländergrenzen in diesen Regionen untersucht. Die Untersuchung kommt zum Ergebnis, dass bisher nur wenige Metropolregionen das Stadium fortgeschrittener Institutionalisierung und damit auch Kooperation erreicht haben. Eine Best-Practice-Empfehlung lässt sich
den eingeschlagenen Institutionalisierungspfaden bisher nicht entnehmen. Der Konstituierungsprozess zeichnet sich derzeit noch durch hohe Dynamik aus, sodass eine Wiederholung der Studie in den nächsten Jahren angezeigt erscheint.
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Optimum Currency Areas in Emerging Market Regions: Evidence Based on the Symmetry of Economic Shocks
Stefan Eichler, Alexander Karmann
Open Economies Review,
No. 5,
2011
Abstract
This paper examines which emerging market regions form optimum currency areas (OCAs) by assessing the symmetry of macroeconomic shocks. We extend the output-prices-VAR framework by adding net exports and the real effective exchange rate as endogenous variables. Based on theoretical considerations, we derive which shocks affect these variables in the long run: shocks to labor productivity, foreign trade, labor supply, and money supply. The considered economies of Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, East and Southeast Asia, and South Asia, exhibit large enough shock symmetry to form a currency union; the economies of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East do not.
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Cluster Policies in the Federal States of Bavaria and Thuringia: Discrepancies between Practice and Theory
Gerhard Heimpold
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 10,
2011
Abstract
Der Beitrag analysiert anhand veröffentlichter Dokumente die Clusterpolitiken in den Ländern Bayern und Thüringen. Ziel dieser Politiken ist die Stärkung der Innovationskraft. Eine explizite allokationspolitische Begründung
für Clusterpolitik mit dem Vorliegen von Externalitäten, Informationsasymmetrien oder Koordinierungsmängeln ist in den Dokumenten nicht sichtbar. Es bleibt daher offen, ob die praktizierte Clusterpolitik tatsächlich ursachenadäquat
ist. Beide Länder fokussieren auf die Unterstützung landesweiter Cluster und Netzwerke. Dadurch könnten aber die Vorteile räumlicher Nähe zu wenig Beachtung finden. Nicht ohne Probleme ist auch die ex ante vorgenommene Auswahl von Branchen und Technologiefeldern in den Clusterpolitiken beider Länder, selbst wenn aus den Eigendarstellungen der fördernden Ressorts Offenheit für Neues ablesbar ist. Denn dem Staat mangelt es generell an Informationen über die Zukunftsfähigkeit von Branchen und Technologien. Der Verzicht auf einen
Branchenfokus zugunsten wettbewerblicher Förderverfahren nach dem Vorbild von Bundesprogrammen kann dieses Problem mildern. Für Thüringen, das seine Clusterpolitik vor allem mit der Kleinteiligkeit der Unternehmensstruktur
motiviert, wird es jenseits clusterpolitischer Bemühungen darauf ankommen, weiterhin auch direkt die Beseitigung dieser strukturellen Nachteile anzuvisieren, insbesondere durch Rahmenbedingungen, die dem Wachstum der vorhandenen Unternehmen förderlich sind.
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MNE’s Regional Location Choice - A Comparative Perspective on East Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland
Andrea Gauselmann, Philipp Marek, J. P. Angenendt
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 8,
2011
published in: Empirica
Abstract
The focus of this article is the empirical identification of factors influencing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in transition economies on a regional level (NUTS 2). The analysis is designed as benchmark between three neighboring post-communist regions, i.e. East Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. Their different transition paths have not only resulted in economic differences. We can also observe today that the importance of pull factors for FDI varies significantly across the regions. This analysis shows that in comparison with Poland and the Czech Republic, East Germany’s major benefit is its purchasing power, its geographical proximity to West European markets, and its modern infrastructure. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that intra-industry linkages such as specialization and agglomeration economies are relevant factors for the location decision of foreign investors. This result can help to explain the regional divergence of FDI streams in transition economies.
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