Competition and innovation: an inverted U relationship?

This paper investigates the relationship between product market competition and innovation. It uses the radical policy reforms in the UK as instruments for changes in product market competition, and finds a robust inverted-U relationship between competition and patenting. It then develops an endogenous growth model with step-by-step innovation that can deliver this inverted-U pattern. In this model, competition has an ambiguous effect on innovation. On the one hand, it discourages laggard firms from innovating, as it reduces their rents from catching up with the leaders in the same industry. On the other hand, it encourages neck-and-neck firms to innovate in order to escape competition with their rival. The inverted-U pattern results from the interplay between these two effects, together with the effect of competition on the equilibrium industry structure. The model generates two additional predictions: on the relationship between competition and the average technological distance between leaders and followers across industries; and on the relationship between the distance of an industry to its technological frontier and the steepness of the inverted-U. Both predictions are supported by the data

Competition and innovation: an inverted U relationship

This paper investigates the relationship between product market competition (PMC) and innovation. A Schumpeterian growth model is developed in which firms innovate ‘step-by-step’, and where both technological leaders and their followers engage in R&D activities. In this model, competition may increase the incremental profit from innovating; on the other hand, competition may also reduce innovation incentives for laggards. This model generates four main predictions which we test empirically. First, the relationship between product market competition (PMC) and innovation is an inverted U-shape: the escape competition effect dominates for low initial levels of competition, whereas the Schumpeterian effect dominates at higher levels of competition. Second, the equilibrium degree of technological ‘neck-and-neckness’ among firms should decrease with PMC. Third, the higher the average degree of ‘neck-and-neckness’ in an industry, the steeper the inverted-U relationship between PMC and innovation in that industry. Fourth, firms may innovate more if subject to higher debt-pressure, especially at lower levels of PMC. We confront these four predictions with a new panel data set on UK firms’ patenting activity at the US patenting office. The inverted U relationship, the neck and neck, and the debt pressure predictions are found to accord well with observed behavior in the data

The U-Shaped relationship between vertical integration and competition: theory and evidence

This paper considers how competition can affect aggregate innovative activity through its effects on firms' decision whether or not to vertically integrate. A moderate increase in competition enhances innovation incentives, too much competition discourages innovative effort. These effects generates an inverted-U relationship between competition and innovation and between competition and the incentive to vertically integrate. Preliminary evidence finds that there is a non-linear relationship between competition and the propensity of firms to vertically integrate. These results seem to be more consistent with the Property Right Theory (PRT) of vertical integration than with the Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) approach

Entry and productivity growth: evidence from microlevel panel data

How does entry affect productivity growth of incumbents? In this paper we exploit policy reforms in the United Kingdom that changed entry conditions by opening up the U.K. economy during the 1980s and panel data on British establishments to shed light on this question. We show that more entry, measured by a higher share of industry employment in foreign firms, has led to faster total factor productivity growth of domestic incumbent firms and thus to faster aggregate productivity growth

The effects of entry on incumbent innovation and productivity

How does firm entry affect innovation incentives and productivity growth in incumbent firms? Micro-data suggests that there is heterogeneity across industries--incumbents in technologically advanced industries react positively to foreign firm entry, but not in laggard industries. To explain this pattern, we introduce entry into a Schumpeterian growth model with multiple sectors which differ by their distance to the technological frontier. We show that technologically advanced entry threat spurs innovation incentives in sectors close to the technological frontier--successful innovation allows incumbents to prevent entry. In laggard sectors it discourages innovation--increased entry threat reduces incumbents' expected rents from innovating. We find that the empirical patterns hold using rich micro-level productivity growth and patent panel data for the UK, and controlling for the endogeneity of entry by exploiting the large number of policy reforms undertaken during the Thatcher era

Sticky Particles and Stochastic Flows

Gaw\c{e}dzki and Horvai have studied a model for the motion of particles carried in a turbulent fluid and shown that in a limiting regime with low levels of viscosity and molecular diffusivity, pairs of particles exhibit the phenomena of stickiness when they meet. In this paper we characterise the motion of an arbitrary number of particles in a simplified version of their model

Contextual factors among indiscriminate or larger attacks on food or water supplies, 1946-2015

This research updates previous inventories of malicious attacks on food and water to include data from 1946 through mid-2015. A systematic search of news reports, databases and previous inventories of poisoning events was undertaken. Incidents that threatened or were intended to achieve direct harm to humans, and that were either relatively large (number of victims > 4 or indiscriminate in intent or realisation were included. Agents could be chemical, biological or radio-nuclear. Reports of candidate incidents were subjected to systematic inclusion and exclusion criteria as well as validity analysis (not always clearly undertaken in previous inventories of such attacks). We summarise contextual aspects of the attacks that may be important for scenario prioritisation, modelling and defensive preparedness. Opportunity is key to most realised attacks, particularly access to dangerous agents. The most common motives and relative success rate in causing harm were very different between food and water attacks. The likelihood that people were made ill or died also varied by food/water mode, and according to motive and opportunity for delivery of the hazardous agent. Deaths and illness associated with attacks during food manufacture and prior to sale have been fewer than those in some other contexts. Valuable opportunities for food defence improvements are identified in other contexts, especially food prepared in private or community settings