Diversity and the technological impact of inventive activity: Evidence for EU regions

Diversity is considered key to research, innovation and growth. However, throughout the literature, the exact meaning of the notion of diversity is often left in the midst. What is more, whilst the relation between diversity and productivity growth by now has been extensively addressed, still few empirical studies exist that address the relationship between diversity and innovation directly. To fill in this gap in the literature, this paper offers an empirical analysis of the relationship between technological diversity and the impact of innovation at the EU regional level whilst including different measures of diversity oriented at different levels of technological detail. Using EPO patent data, first, a set of different measures related to diversity is created exploiting the hierarchical structure of patent classes of the International Patent Classification (IPC). Second, the impact of innovation is captured by two citation-based indicators. Whilst the count of (field-normalized) citations is used to proxy the quality of innovation in terms of average impact, the number of highly cited patents is used as a proxy for top-quality innovation in terms of research excellence. Concerning the average impact of innovation, we clearly observe an advantage of specializing in innovation activities in few and related technological sectors. Localization economies can operate not only at low levels of aggregation, but also at a very high level, depending on the classification scheme. Results for research excellence are similar, with two main differences though. First, the impact of evenness on research excellence is non-monotonic in the level of aggregation and can be significant also for a very high level of aggregation. Second, while localization has positive impact on research excellence at the lowest level of aggregation similarly to average quality, a negative impact is found for all the other levels. The main conclusion of this paper holds that related specialization (conceived in terms of either similarity or related variety) and localization have a positive effect on the impact of EU regional innovation the more technological detail is taken into account. Our results then first and foremost stress the importance of taking into account (i) the relations among different technologies and (ii) the appropriate level of technological detail along which relations among technologies play out. As related specialization has a positive effect on technological impact, policymakers could consider either one of two policy options in order to boost the impact of innovation in Europe. One option concerns steering related specialization and localization at a coarse-grained technological level further as to increase the impact of innovation. If related diversification and not related specialization is considered to be a viable policy option in Europe, then the reward system of innovation should be drastically revised

Diversity and the technological impact of inventive activity: evidence for EU regions

Diversity has been considered as a prerequisite for turning prevailing technological trajectories into new and unexpected directions. However, little evidence exists on the exact nature of the more direct relationship between diversity and the impact of technologies. One main contribution of this paper is therefore to investigate the relationship between technological diversity and the impact of inventions across EU regions. Using EPO patent data, a set of measures is created considering different notions of diversity and different levels of technological aggregation, as allowed by the hierarchical structure of the International Patent Classification (IPC). The technological impact of inventions is captured by two citation-based indicators measuring an average and a high impact. For both measures we find that diversity is typically detrimental, or at best neutral, for the impact of new technologies, except when a very fine-grained technological detail is taken into account. However, in the latter case, nearly opposite results are found, namely, positive effects from related variety and, particularly for high technological impact, from combination of relatively distant technologies. Therefore, an important contribution of this paper is to show that these effects are very sensitive to the aggregation level used, and hence that policymakers should gain a very detailed understanding about the relations among technologies before implementing either specialization or diversification strategies.JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistic

An analysis of national research systems (II): Efficiency in the production of research excellence

The main contribution of this project lies in the assessment of the efficiency of national research systems in achieving excellent research performances. The efficiency assessment is not only restricted to the production of research excellence in general, but is disentangled by type of research field, distinguishing between science and technology. This distinction provides a helpful tool for policy makers in assessing the discrepancy of efficiency in both science and technology excellence within and across countries. In our conceptual framework, a national research system’s efficiency can be defined as the extent to which a country is able to transform research assets into excellent research. We conducted efficiency analyses on three main model specifications in which we relate the amount of resource assets (public, private, total R&D expenditure) to the performance on excellent research. In our empirical analysis of efficiency, we report on two methodologies: output/input ratios (partial measures of efficiency) and robust production frontiers (complete and robust measures, order-m and order-alpha method, as developed by Daraio and Simar (2007a). Various conclusions are drawn based on these analyses.JRC.G.3-Econometrics and applied statistic

An analysis of national research systems (I): A Composite Indicator for Scientific and Technological Research Excellence

This paper first develops a framework for the analysis of national research systems, with particular focus on the excellence of scientific and technological research, a central topic for the current European research and innovation policy discourse. Next, after carefully considering measurement and data issues, it proposes a set of strong and weaker country-level indicators of research excellence, based on which a composite indicator of scientific and technological research excellence is proposed and tested for robustness and sensitivity. The research was conducted on behalf of DG-RTD within the framework of the 'Composites_4_IU' project.JRC.G.3-Econometrics and applied statistic

Mass hierarchies and non-decoupling in multi-scalar field dynamics

In this work we study the effects of field space curvature on scalar field perturbations around an arbitrary background field trajectory evolving in time. Non-trivial imprints of the 'heavy' directions on the low energy dynamics arise when the vacuum manifold of the potential does not coincide with the span of geodesics defined by the sigma model metric of the full theory. When the kinetic energy is small compared to the potential energy, the field traverses a curve close to the vacuum manifold of the potential. The curvature of the path followed by the fields can still have a profound influence on the perturbations as modes parallel to the trajectory mix with those normal to it if the trajectory turns sharply enough. We analyze the dynamical mixing between these non-decoupled degrees of freedom and deduce its non-trivial contribution to the low energy effective theory for the light modes. We also discuss the consequences of this mixing for various scenarios where multiple scalar fields play a vital role, such as inflation and low-energy compactifications of string theory.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, typeset in PRD style. v2: Minor changes throughout to emphasize that the analysis also applies to sharp and/or prolonged turns. References adde

Organizational adaptiveness during COVID-19: The role of absorptive capacity and management practices

COVID-19 forced many businesses to rapidly adapt to new circumstances. While firms could not foresee this shock, some were better able to adapt than others. This required firms to quickly and efficiently process new information from both external and internal sources. To what extent and how are absorptive capacity and quality of management practices important in this setting? We expect a high level of absorptive capacity to enable firms to efficiently gather and process external information, whereas good management practices helps them to deal with internal information. To test these hypotheses, we run a large scale survey among companies in the Netherlands to assess their level of absorptive capacity and the quality of their management practices. We relate this to their level of adaptiveness, measured in terms of firms’ pivot toward online revenue sources during COVID-19. We find that firms with greater absorptive capacity and greater quality of management practices earned a higher share of their revenues online. This suggests that absorptive capacity and management practices enable firms to adapt successfully in response to the COVID-19 shock

Vibrations of a Complex System with a Viscoelastic Inertial Interlayer

The paper presents an analytical method for solving problems of free and forced vibrations with damping of complex systems whose loaded layers are made of homogeneous elastic inertial materials, and the middle one is made of viscoelastic inertial material. Small lateral vibrations of the complex systems are caused by distributed and movable loads. A dynamic analysis of laminated structures for a wide range of variation of the geometrical and mechanical characteristics of a layer from viscoelastic inertial material was performed.Предложен аналитический метод решения задач о затухании свободных и вынужденных колебаний сложных систем, несущие слои которых выполнены из однородного упругого, а средний - из вязкоупругого инерционного материала. Малые поперечные колебания сложных систем обусловлены распределенной и подвижной нагрузкой. Выполнен динамический анализ слоистых конструкций в широком диапазоне изменения геометрических и механических характеристик слоя из вязкоупругого инерционного материала.Запропоновано аналітичний метод розв’язку задач щодо згасання вільних та вимушених коливань складних систем, несучі шари яких виконано з однорідного пружного, а середній - з в’язкопружного інерційного матеріалу. Малі поперечні коливання складних систем зумовлені розподіленим і рухомим навантаженням. Виконано динамічний аналіз шаруватих конструкцій у широкому діапазоні зміни геометричних і механічних характеристик шару з в’язкопружного інерційного матеріалу

Effective theories of single field inflation when heavy fields matter

We compute the low energy effective field theory (EFT) expansion for single-field inflationary models that descend from a parent theory containing multiple other scalar fields. By assuming that all other degrees of freedom in the parent theory are sufficiently massive relative to the inflaton, it is possible to derive an EFT valid to arbitrary order in perturbations, provided certain generalized adiabaticity conditions are respected. These conditions permit a consistent low energy EFT description even when the inflaton deviates off its adiabatic minimum along its slowly rolling trajectory. By generalizing the formalism that identifies the adiabatic mode with the Goldstone boson of this spontaneously broken time translational symmetry prior to the integration of the heavy fields, we show that this invariance of the parent theory dictates the entire non-perturbative structure of the descendent EFT. The couplings of this theory can be written entirely in terms of the reduced speed of sound of adiabatic perturbations. The resulting operator expansion is distinguishable from that of other scenarios, such as standard single inflation or DBI inflation. In particular, we re-derive how certain operators can become transiently strongly coupled along the inflaton trajectory, consistent with slow-roll and the validity of the EFT expansion, imprinting features in the primordial power spectrum, and we deduce the relevant cubic operators that imply distinct signatures in the primordial bispectrum which may soon be constrained by observations.Comment: (v1) 25 pages, 1 figure; (v2) references added and typos corrected, to appear in Journal of High Energy Physic