Is innovation important for development? And if so, how? One popular perception of innovation, that one meets in media every day, is that has to do with developing brand new, advanced solutions for sophisticated, well-off customers, through exploitation of the most recent advances in knowledge....

The aim of the paper is to assess heterogeneity of the innovation process. Using exploratory factor analysis on micro data from the third Community Innovation Survey in 13 countries, we identify four factors that that can be interpreted as research, user, external and production ingredients of...

National framework conditions mediate the effect of technological capabilities of firms on their productivity. Although this has been recognized in the literature for a long time, a quantitative test that explicitly considers this hypothesis has been lacking. Using a World Bank datasets of about...

Innovation is a multilevel phenomenon. Not only characteristics of firms but also environment within which firms operate matter. Although this has been for long recognized in the literature, a quantitative test that explicitly concerns the hypothesis that framework conditions affect...

In this paper, we test the Rodrik et al (2004) framework to explain differences in development levels across countries by using a broader set of definitions for institutions, geography and economic variables. We use a multi-faceted database to measure institutions in an attempt to go beyond the...

This report provides an overview of current research on and knowledge about employment trends and policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Access to productive employment is seen as essential for poverty reduction and the inclusion of the poor in wider society. Productive employment is characterised by...

We estimate the diffusion of micro cogeneration systems (MiCoGen) using hydrogen produced from natural gas in the Netherlands for the 2000-2050 period on the basis of economical factors. The diffusion is important for the transition to a hydrogen economy based on renewables, with natural gas...

We review the literature on national innovation systems. We first focus on the emergence of the concept of innovation systems, reviewing its historical origins and three main flavours (associated to three "founding fathers" of the concept). After this, we discuss how the notion of innovation...

The empirical literature on economic growth agrees that institutions and governance are important determinants of long-run economic growth rates. As a stylized fact, this literature points to a strong correlation between the level of GDP per capita and the general development level of...

We investigate technological change with regard to CO2 emissions by passenger cars, using a Free Disposal Hull methodology to estimate technological frontiers. We have a sample of cars available in the UK market in the period 2000 – 2007. Our results show that the rates of technological change...