THE DETERMINANTS OF INNOVATION IN THE ITALIAN FOOD INDUSTRY: THE ROLE OF R&D NETWORKING

Objective of the paper is to verify which are the determinants of innovations in theItalian food industry and which role R&D networking, through the cooperative nature offirm, plays among these determinants.The data used are the 9th (2001-2003) wave of Capitalia surveys based on arepresentative sample of manufacturing firms with information on firm characteristics,employee education levels, innovation and R&D investments.The approach is a bivariate probit analysis where the two dependent variables are thepresence of firm R&D and of innovations and the independent variables are firmcharacteristics.The results of the analysis show that, among the determinants of firm R&D intramoenia and of firm innovations in the Italian food industry for the years 2001-03, thepresence of subsidies for R&D extra moenia, is the most significant variable with the highestmarginal effect while the cooperative variable turns out to be positive and significant (6%)after including relative input prices.