African countries lag clearly behind developed countries when it comes to accumulating technological capabilities, upgrading and catching up. Also, firms in least developed countries are characterised by very low levels of absorptive capacity. It is therefore crucial to understand how this...

This study investigates the determinants of R&D expenditures in the Swedish pharmaceutical industry from the 1960s to the mid 1990s. Various proxies for the rate of return of R&D (e.g. expected profit, sales and R&D productivity) as well as the availability of internal funding (proxied by past...

The focus in this paper is on industrial dynamics and its impact on energy systems.. We highlight some fundamental patterns of this long-term dynamics, using the Dahmenian concept ‘development blocks’, with ‘market widening’ and ‘market suction’, and discuss the implications for...

Recent studies of innovation behavior characteristics focus on analysis of microdata (enterprise level) as the key instrument to reveal facts and hypotheses describing the innovation activities under diverse economic, political and infrastructural conditions. This paper applies the...

“Monitoring innovation activities of innovation process participants” is a project which has been carried out by the Higher School of Economics (HSE) for several years to promote monitoring and analysis of innovation issues in general, and on specific activities of its particular actors from...

Traditionally, economic geographers stress geographical proximity’s positive impact on collaboration processes. Recently, effects of cognitive, organisational, social and institutional proximity dimensions have been emphasised. This paper examines the relations between geography and these...

Previous research has shown that firms react differently to the same institutional configurations due to their different backgrounds. This study examines a regional economy in France in which 300 firms are operating under the same framework conditions and have done so over a long period. From...

This paper draws on observations from a long-established network in France, located around the town of Cognac – site of distilled beverages with the same name. Firms within this network have been successful in developing new types of products in the past decades, drawing on and diverging from...

Subsidiaries of foreign multinational companies are essential part of the modern Russian economy. In many sectors, they enjoy dominant positions. Innovation is an important driver and determinant of this dominance. Yet, little research has been done on innovation strategies and innovation...

Technological innovations are inherently problematic (risky, uncertain, possess public goods properties (enhances free-riding since it is easy to steal), but once they succeed, they create negative externalities for incumbents in the form of economic resources redistribution. Economic resources...