The determinants of regional specialisation in business services: agglomeration economies, vertical linkages and innovation

The article accounts for the determinants of sectoral specialisation in business services (BS) across the EU-27 regions as determined by: (i) agglomeration economies (ii) the region-specific structure of intermediate linkages (iii) technological innovation and knowledge intensity and (iv) the presence of these factors in neighbouring regions. The empirical analysis draws upon the REGIO panel database over the period 1999–2003. By estimating a Spatial Durbin Model, we find significant spatial effects in explaining regional specialisation in BS. Our findings show that, besides urbanisation economies, the spatial structure of intermediate sectoral linkages and innovation, in particular Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), are important determinants of specialisation in BS. The article contributes to the debate on the global versus local determinants of regional specialisation in BS by restating the importance of the regional sectoral structure besides that of urbanisation. We draw policy implications by rejecting the ‘footloose hypothesis’ for BS

The role of screening and cross-selling in bank-firm relationships

This paper presents a monopolistic competition model of a bank choosing the optimal level of the screening effort in the presence of cross-selling activities. We demonstrate that, in absence of informational synergies, the larger is the range of services that the bank produces, the lower is the optimal screening effort. The paper also analyses the impact of competition in the lending market on cross-selling activities and finds that, for sufficiently low levels of transportation costs, an increase in competition in the lending market increases the expected profitability of services, thus increasing banks’ incentives to engage in cross-selling activities.Policy games, policy effectiveness, controllability, Nash equilibrium existence, rational expectations

The role of banks as producers of information: can it survive competition and cross-selling incentives

This paper studies the impact of competition on lending behaviour and cross-selling incentives of banks in a spatial competition model of the banking sector where positively evaluated loan applicants are more likely to buy other services from their lending bank. Overall our model suggests that the more competition increases in the loan market, the more the banking system is encouraged to move towards non-traditional activities and the less credit is information-based. This undesired effect of competition in the loan market may have contributed in the past to the excessive risk-taking behaviour of European banks and could hamper the stability of the financial system in the future

The Specialisation of EU Regions in Fast Growing and Key Enabling Technologies

In the context of the Europe 2020 objective of establishing in the EU a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, European regions have been called to design and implement national and regional 'Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation' (RIS3). The rationale behind the concept of smart specialisation is that, in a context of global competition for talent and resources, most regions can only acquire a real competitive edge by finding niches or by mainstreaming new technologies into traditional industries and exploiting their ‘smart’ regional potential. Although the most promising way for a region to promote its knowledge-based growth is to diversify into technologies, products and services that are closely related to existing dominant technologies and the regional skills base, the European Commission puts special emphasis on a set of technologies labelled as 'Key Enabling Technologies' (KETs). Despite the great emphasis on KETs, there is only very limited evidence on the capability of EU regions to specialise in these fields and there are no studies directly investigating the actual impact of these technologies on regional innovation and economic growth. This report aims at filling these gaps by: i) looking at the relationship between KETs and 'Fast Growing Technologies' (FGTs); ii) providing empirical evidence on the EU regional specialisation in KETs and FGTs; iii) relating technological specialisation to regional innovation and economic growth. In particular, the report aims at answering these questions: 1) Which technologies have emerged as the fastest growing ones in the recent decades? 2) Is there a relationship between fast growing technologies and KETs? 3) Which regions are specialised in FGTs and KETs? 4) Are there convergence and polarization phenomena observable in the evolution of EU regions’ innovative activities in fast growing technologies and KETs? 5) Do EU regions specialized in fastest growing technological fields and key enabling technologies exhibit higher innovation and economic performances? The main results of the report can be summarised as follows. First, only a small share of KETs are also fast growing technologies, although the degree of overlapping between KETs and FGTs varies substantially across different KETs fields. Second, while KETs are concentrated in Central Europe, FGTs prevail in Scandinavian countries and the UK. Third, while there is evidence of some regional convergence in KETs and, to a less extent, in FGTs, spatial correlation increases over time, showing that diffusion often occurs across contiguous regions. Finally, the results of the estimations of the effects of FGTs and KETs on innovation (patents) and economic (GDP per capita) growth show that only specialisation in KETs directly affects economic growth, while specialisation in FGTs has an impact on growth only indirectly, that is through its impact on regions’ innovation performances. Overall, these results confirm the pervasive and enabling role of KETs pointing to the importance for European regions to target these technologies as part of their RIS3 strategies.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt

The Determinants of Investment in Information and Communication Technologies. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 16/March 2010

In this paper we investigate the determinants of ICT investment at the macro level for a panel of ten countries over the period 1992-2005. We argue that, since ICT is a General Purpose Technology, its diffusion can be understood only considering the interaction with institutional and structural factors. The empirical results are in line with this view: facilitating factors such as changes in regulation, human capital and the sectoral composition of the economy are relevant determinants for increasing ICT investment

Green patents, regulatory policies and research network policies

The main goal of this paper is to analyse the single and joint impact of regulation policies and research network policies on environmental innovation. Our theoretical framework combines the open eco-innovation mode approach with the Porter Hypothesis, by adapting them to the knowledge production function where green patents are the dependent variable. We focus on the factors that influence the production of green patents as a proxy of new “environmental” knowledge for a panel of European countries over time. We find that both marked-based regulation policies and participation in green European research networks (in particular with universities and public research centres) positively affect environmental innovation. Moreover, the two policy tools have a complementary effect. This suggests that the effectiveness of environmental regulation policies can be increased by combining them with appropriate innovation policies

When Linder meets Hirschman: inter-industry linkages and global value chains in business services

This article looks at the determinants of a country’s participation in business services (BS) global value chains (GVCs). BS GVCs are comparatively less explored than traditional manufacturing ones, and there is a gap in the literature on the relative positions of countries in BS GVCs and the opportunities they might open for development. This article puts forward and finds empirical support to the conjecture that the domestic structure of backward and forward linkages à la Hirschman, alongside the domestic representative demand for BS à la Linder, are of high importance. The results, based on the World Input-Output Database, suggest that the presence of strong domestic backward-linked industries to BS makes an emerging country more likely to create domestic value within BS GVC. Our findings contribute to the debate on a “premature de-industrialization” in emerging countries and on the relationship between levels of development and engagement in BS GVCs