Venture mania in Europe: Its causes and consequences

Over the course of the past twenty years, venture capital has fuelled an entrepreneurial revolution - first in the United States and now in Europe's common market -, which has opened new opportunities for technological innovation, capital investment and employment growth. Some of the most promising opportunities are in science-based industries, like software and biotechnology, which are often seen as driving the transformation to an increasingly knowledge- based economy. Indeed, this transformation would hardly be conceivable without the innovative contributions of business start-ups that rely on venture capital to finance their early stages of growth. So what, if anything, should governments do to support venture capital and help this transformation along? This paper will argue that governments must understand that venture capital is necessarily linked to specialization and therefore cannot be expected to play the same role in any two economies whose place, and contribution, within the international division of labour differ. --

Technology and the dynamics of specialization in open economies.

Internationale Arbeitsteilung; Neue Wachstumstheorie; Offene Volkswirtschaft; Innovation; Hysteresis; Industriepolitik; Theorie;

Technology and empirical dynamics of specialization in open economies

This paper applies Markov chain analysis to examine the empirical dynamics of sectoral specialization in open economies. At issue is here persistence and the hypothesis of hysteresis in national patterns of industrial specialization, often claimed as an implication of strong path dependence in the evolution of high-technologies specific to certain industries. The evidence from twelve OECD member countries' time series of value added in 17 manufacturing industries and from corresponding patent count data does not support the hypothesis of hysteresis based on nationally restricted knowledge spillovers from industrial research and development activities. On the contrary, there seems to be generally lower persistence in patterns of technological specialization than in the corresponding production specialization. Moreover, high persistence in some parts of manufacturing mostly disappears when taking into account changes in countries' relative factor endowments, which form the basis of dynamic comparative advantages. These findings cast doubt on the popular belief that a government can — by making cleverly designed and appropriately timed industrial policy interventions — secure a permanently larger share of certain industries for the national economy which are supposed to lock in first mover advantages in terms of particularly high rates of technological innovation and productivity growth.

Comparative advantage for research and development across industries in OECD countries

This paper explores the empirical relevance of the concept of comparative advantage and of the factor proportions theory of international trade and specialisation for the distribution of research and development (R&D) activities across seventeen industries in fourteen OECD member countries over the period from 1970 to 1989. The paper first discusses bivariate correlations between countries' R&D intensities across industries and industries' R&D intensities across countries which confirm that the average R&D intensity is a characteristic feature of individual industries as well as of individual countries. Using the analysis of variance technique, the paper then shows that the type of industry and the country of its location are determinants of the observed human capital intensity in R&D, measured here either by the ratio of university graduates in R&D to other R&D personnel or by the ratio of R&D scientists and engineers to other R&D personnel. Finally, the paper uses multiple regression analysis to examine — separately for each industry in the sample —the impact of a country's human capital endowment, production specialisation, size and of time on the degree to which the country specialises in a particular industry's R&D activities. While the results of these regressions are generally not inconsistent with the factor proportions theory, they do reveal strikingly distinct patterns of R&D specialisation for computers, electrical machinery and radio, television and communication equipment, the industries most closely connected to the fast changing microelectronic technologies.