The Patterns of Inter-firm and Inter-industry Knowledge Flows in the Netherlands

This paper presents a study of backward and forward patent citations in patents granted to firms and institutions in the Netherlands by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The study establishes different patterns of patent citation in recent Dutch patents belonging to different industrial classes. We run our model in the set of backward citations made in Dutch applicants’ patents during 1996-2006 and in the set of forward citations to patents issued to firms and organizations in the Netherlands during 1993-2006. We compare the patterns of knowledge utilization (represented by backward patent citations) and knowledge dissemination (represented by forward patent citations) and obtain evidence of inter- or intra-firm and inter- or intra-industry knowledge spillovers. In the context of effective competition and innovation policies we advocate for paying special attention to industry specifics when designing policy programs and measures directed at stimulating R&D cooperation and knowledge spillovers. We present evidence that policies for promoting better knowledge exchange among firms should also distinguish between the measures for promoting the inward and the outward knowledge flows for companies in the Netherlands.knowledge flows, R&D spillovers, backward and forward patent citations

Innovation Strategies in a Competitive Dynamic Setting

This paper presents a dynamic model of a competitive R&D and production duopoly subject to knowledge spillovers. Two asymmetric firms operate for a limited period of time and dispose their knowledge capital in the end. Both firms and the social planner prefer the R&D-cooperative strategy over the competitive one regardless of the intensity of knowledge spillovers. Accumulation of knowledge capital results allows the monopolist to have lower marginal cost of production and charge a lower market price than a fully competitive duopoly. Being able to define the degree of knowledge exchange when creating a research joint venture, the firms do not necessary choose the highest degree of cooperation available.innovation, R&D, spillovers, cooperation

Home green home; a case study of inducing energy-efficient innovations in the Dutch building sector

This document provides a case study of policies aiming to foster technological innovations for ‘green’ buildings in the Netherlands. The study aims to provide 1) a detailed overview of the policy framework over the last thirty years, and 2) a picture of the level of innovations related to energy efficiency in buildings in the Netherlands. �The analysis shows an intensification of environmental policy in the Dutch building sector in the mid-1990s, followed by a slight decline after 2001. A striking feature of environmental policy in this sector is the large number of policy programs implemented successively for short periods of time. This might affect the stability and continuity of the policy framework and be damaging for innovation. Faced with high levels of uncertainty about future policies, firms may prefer to postpone risky investments in innovative activities. Finally, governmental R&D support for green innovations in general remains very low in the Netherlands. Descriptive data on patenting activities show that Dutch firms file nowadays about 150 patents annually in the field of energy efficiency in buildings. The Netherlands have a clear comparative advantage in the field of energy-saving lighting technologies, mainly due to intensive patenting activities by Philips. High-efficiency boilers also represent a substantial share of Dutch innovation activities in this domain over the last decades. In many other fields (such as insulation, heat-pumps and co-generation, solar boilers, etc), however, Germany, Austria and Scandinavian countries rank much higher than the Netherlands.

Relation entry, exit and productivity: an overview of recent theoretical and empirical literature

This document provides a review of recent theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between entry, exit and productivity. Decomposition methods show that entry and exit considerably contribute to productivity growth, but are unable to shed any light on the ultimate sources of productivity growth. However, the theories discussed do provide options for effective policy instruments. We argue that productivity or welfare should be the aim of policy and not the number of entrants, the intensity of competition or the amount of innovation expenditures. Taking a welfare approach, we address market failures with respect to entry. The most eminent market failure is market power of dominant incumbents. Lowering institutional entry barriers economy-wide is a promising policy option for further consideration. Whether such a policy measure actually improves social welfare depends also on the extent of other failures. Therefore, an ex ante cost-benefit analysis needs to precede intervention.

EU Petroleum Refining Fitness Check: Impact of EU Legislation on Sectoral Economic Performance

This report presents the results of the quantitative assessment of the impact on the petroleum refining sector of legislative measures, identified in the process of European Commission's analysis and stakeholder consultations as being of significant relevance for petroleum refineries, and as such included in the mandate of the fitness check. This quantitative assessment took into account the impact of the legislation on costs and revenues of the EU petroleum refining industry and therefore on its capacity to remain internationally competitive. This analysis, mostly of a quantitative nature, was accompanied where possible and relevant by a qualitative assessment in accordance with the Commission's general approach to fitness checks . In particular, the report analysed how coherently and consistently the EU legislation, identified as relevant for the sector, works together, whether it is effective and efficient, and whether it is associated with excessive regulatory burdens, overlaps, gaps, inconsistencies or obsolete measures. Since this fitness check addressed a specific industry sector rather than a policy area, it had a specific focus on the cumulative impact, effectiveness, efficiency and coherence of the measures with respect to the oil refining sector. As stated in the mandate of the fitness check, the analysis in this report was retrospective and concentrated on the impact of the relevant legislation on the petroleum refining sector in the period between 2000 and 2012.JRC.J.5-Sustainable Production and Consumptio

The effect of microcredit on women's control over household spending in developing countries: a systematic review

Background: Over the past three decades, microfinance activities have spread across the globe, reaching tens of millions of poor households with tailored financial services. Microfinance can best be described as a field of intervention rather than a particular instrument. Initially, microfinance usually meant microcredit for working capital and very small investments, but increasingly it has been broadened to include savings/deposits, a limited range of micro-insurance and payment services (including micro-leasing) as well as a somewhat broader range of credit products for more substantial investments. In this study we focused on microcredit activities, constituting the bulk of microfinance activities across the globe. Microcredit activities have affected the lives of clients and others in multiple ways. The most frequently reported types of effects of credit at individual, enterprise and household level are the following: income, expenditure smoothing, and poverty alleviation effects; business growth and employment effects; schooling effects; and effects in terms of women's empowerment. Despite the diversity in microcredit schemes, many share two characteristics: they target poor women and often rely on some type of group-based lending. Women's empowerment in relation to microcredit has been studied extensively within the context of this type of microcredit scheme. Most of these studies have been carried out in the context of microcredit group schemes in South Asia. It has been argued that access to microcredit can foster changes in individual attitudes of women (e.g. increased self-reliance), power relations within the household (e.g. control over resources) and social status. An important dimension of empowerment concerns women's control over household spending. The main assumption is that by providing credit to poor women, their direct control over expenditures within the household increases, with subsequent implications for the status of women and the well-being of women and other household members. Women's control over household spending is a frequently recurring aspect analyzed within the context of microcredit interventions, which allows us to study whether microcredit targeted at women affects women's control over household spending decisions and the circumstances in which this occurs. Despite the central and recurrent role across studies of this aspect of women's empowerment in relation to microcredit activities, there has been no previous review on this topic. The growing importance of microcredit has resulted in a vast number of research and evaluation studies, including impact studies. Consequently, the microfinance literature harbors a substantial number of synthesis studies which discuss a set of microcredit interventions and aim to generate overall conclusions on their effects. However, most of these studies face limitations in terms of depth of empirical assessment and the extent to which the identified effects can be attributed to microcredit. Moreover, methodological principles regarding comprehensive searches and principles of selection, coding, extraction and aggregation are often lacking in review studies. Partial exceptions are three recent systematic reviews which all differ in scope from the present one (Stewart et al., 2010; Duvendack et al. 2011; Stewart et al., 2012). The reviews respectively focus on microfinance (credit and savings) in Sub-Sahara Africa, microcredit worldwide, and microfinance worldwide (credit, saving and leasing). Overall, these reviews suggest that the effects of microcredit on women's empowerment are at best mixed. In part this can be explained by the heterogeneity in microcredit interventions, contexts and target groups. However, the existing reviews did not use statistical meta-analysis to synthesise evidence of effects, nor context-mechanism-outcome synthesis to understand the variation in effects. Objectives: The main objective of this study was to provide a systematic review of the evidence on the effects of microcredit on women's control over household spending in developing countries. More specifically, we aimed to answer two related research questions: 1) what does the impact evaluative evidence say about the causal relationship between microcredit and specific dimensions of women's empowerment (women'ss control over household spending); and 2) what are the mechanisms which mediate this relationship. We prioritise depth of analysis over breadth, thus the scope of this review is narrower than previous systematic reviews on microfinance (Stewart et al., 2010; Duvendack et al. 2011; Stewart et al., 2012). We focused on specific aspects of women's empowerment which allowed us to combine statistical meta-analysis and realist (context-mechanism-outcome) synthesis. Criteria for considering studies for this review: We included studies that analyzed the effects of microcredit schemes targeting poor women in low and middle income countries, as defined by the World Bank. Studies that did not include analysis on microcredit and the effect on one or more dimensions (specified in main body of the report) of women's control over household expenditures were excluded. Studies which gave evidence of addressing the attribution problem either through randomised design, quasi-experimental matching, or regression analysis, were included. In practice, women's control over household spending (as a key dimension of empowerment) is influenced by many different factors. By focusing on those studies which explicitly addressed the challenge of separating the effect of microcredit from other influencing factors, we developed what we consider to be the most credible evidence base for drawing conclusions about the effects of microcredit on women's control over household expenditures in different contexts. SEARCH STRATEGY We conducted a comprehensive search covering all relevant academic databases, internet search engines and web sites with published and unpublished research, and also carried out extensive manual searches of books and additional journals not included in electronic data bases (searches were concluded on December 31, 2011). We used back-referencing from recent studies as well as citation-tracking to identify additional relevant studies. Finally, authors of studies which we were unable to retrieve were contacted. In addition, we contacted experts on microcredit and women's empowerment for additional references which we might have missed. Search strategies in databases and journals were adapted for each source. Where possible we used the existing keyword indices of particular databases. In addition, we applied our own list of combinations of keywords covering all relevant terms relating to the independent variable (i.e. credit and its variations) and the dependent variable (i.e. dimensions of women's control over household spending, empowerment). Data collection and analysis: From the different searches we identified an initial number of 310 papers that were selected for full text examination. Eventually, 29 papers were retained for further analysis, corresponding to 25 unique studies. These 25 independent findings were included in the synthesis. However, based on a systematic risk of bias assessment we found that more than half of the included studies had high threats to internal validity. Moreover, only about half of the studies show a clear and coherent link between a theoretical framework on microcredit and women's control over household spending and empirical data analysis. It should be noted that reviewing and synthesizing quantitative results from studies is only one side of the coin. The other side is to understand what makes them work, or what prevents them from working. Consequently, we conducted a qualitative synthesis of the included studies, which focused on identifying the mechanisms which underlie the causal relationship between microcredit and women's control over household spending. RESULTS The results of the meta-analysis indicated that the effect sizes from experimental studies examining effects of microcredit on women's control over household spending are not statistically significantly different from zero. The effects from quasi-experimental studies are statistically insignificant overall, and at best of small magnitude for those studies assessed of being of high risk of bias. We conclude that there is no consistent evidence for an effect of microcredit on women's control over household spending. In the qualitative analysis, using Coleman's (1986, 1990) typology of mechanisms, we identified five different situational mechanisms and eight different action-formation mechanisms. Due to the combination of substantial heterogeneity in contexts (e.g. existing gender relations) and interventions (e.g. microcredit versus microcredit and additional services), and the lack of information in the studies on this heterogeneity, it was not possible to go beyond the identification of mechanisms, in terms of generating empirically tested articulated theories of change which are representative beyond a specific study context. Authors' conclusions: In line with three recent other reviews on microfinance (Stewart et al., 2010; Duvendack et al., 2011; Stewart et al. 2012) we found that the microcredit evidence base is extensive, yet most studies are weak methodologically. From those studies deemed comparable and of minimum acceptable quality, we concluded that overall there is no evidence for an effect of microcredit on women's control over household spending. Women's control over household resources constitutes an important intermediary dimension in processes of women's empowerment. Given the overall lack of evidence for an effect of microcredit on women's control over household resources it is therefore very unlikely that, overall, microcredit has a meaningful and substantial impact on empowerment processes in a broader sense. While impacts on empowerment may appear to have occurred in particular studies, the high risk of bias of studies providing positive assessments suggests that such findings are of limited validity. Our conclusions on the effects of microcredit on empowerment are also in line with previous systematic reviews by Duvendack et al. (2011) and Stewart (et al. 2010) who report to a limited extent on empowerment effects. Consequently, there appears to be a gap between the often optimistic societal belief in the capacity of microcredit to ameliorate the position of women in decision-making processes within the household on the one hand, and the empirical evidence base on the other hand. However, our review markedly differs from previous reviews in two regards. First, we specifically focused on microcredit and women's empowerment captured through women's control over household expenditures. Second, as a result of this narrower focus, we were able to conduct statistical meta-analysis and extract behavioral mechanisms which can help to explain why and how microcredit can make a difference. The advantage of our approach was that the identified mechanisms all stem from studies which show evidence of addressing the attribution problem. Consequently, we can be quite confident of the insights that they provided on the effects of microcredit on women's control over household spending for particular populations of microcredit female clients and their families. Those studies that showed evidence of addressing the attribution problem were relatively weak on underlying theory. Moreover, they often lacked essential information such as the nature of the intervention and how it related to empowerment (e.g. how solidarity groups affect empowerment processes) or the slowly evolving gender relations in different contexts (e.g. the evolution of societal norms and the relationship with power relations in the household). A next logical step would be to undertake a systematic review of qualitative studies which often provide rich and context-specific information on microcredit and women's decision-making power in the household. Such a review should ideally build on the mechanisms identified in the present review and would bring us closer to uncovering credible theories of microcredit and the circumstances in which it may change women's decision-making power