Although the prospect of obtaining patent protection is believed to encourage R&D investments and thus the rate of inventive activity, there is little by way of direct evidence to support this belief. We use original data from the 1994 Carnegie Mellon survey on the appropriation of R&D in the US...

We contribute a novel approach to the existing literature on the effects of restructuring on R&D investment by focussing on a single industry, chemicals. The chemical industry is very research intensive and has experienced thorough restructuring since the early 1980s. By focussing on a single...

Applied economists and strategy scholars have examined a variety of firm-level factors that may explain the level and direction of firms' innovative effort and performance, including firms' profit incentives. Innovation at the firm level, however, should also depend heavily on the nature of the...

This paper explored an unusually comprehensive dataset of more than 2,000 drug R&D projects all over the world during the 1990s. This enabled us to characterise several features of the innovation process in pharmaceuticals, particularly the different role and comparative R&D performance of the...

This paper measures differences in the innovation performance of different types of firms in the pharmaceutical industry. We compare the innovation performance of incumbent firms with entrants, controlling for differences in the scale and scope of research, both at the firm level and at the...

This paper studies how an independent upstream capital good sector in a technology based industry can act as a mechanism for the transmission of growth across countries. Technologies, once developed, can be ‘transferred’ to other countries at low incremental cost. If there are upstream firms...

This paper analyses the development of software in India and Ireland. The development patterns of the software industry in Ireland and India clearly show both the advantages and disadvantages of being a follower. The most obvious advantage is the ability to sustain growth without a broad based...

This paper provides an explanation of the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in information-intensive vertical supply relationships. Specifically, we explore the connection between stronger property rights and the enhanced viability of specialized (versus vertically integrated) input...

Although market transactions for technologies, ideas, knowledge or information are limited by several well known imperfections, there is increasing evidence that they have become more common than in the past. In this paper we argue that these markets change the traditional mindset in which the...

A significant amount of software development is being outsourced to countries such as India. Many Indian software firms have applied for and received quality certifications like the ISO9001, and the number of quality certified software firms has steadily increased. Despite its growing popularity...