Institutional effects in the worldwide expansion of the innovation economy ; Institutiónal effects in the worldwide expansión of the innovatión economy

Abstract

In this work, I conceptualize innovation as a core institution of the world economy and society, and study the factors involved in its expansion across the globe. Specifically, I examine local conditions and global institutional pressures affecting a country's willingness to take part in the innovation economy, its level of expenditure on innovation, and the actual product of those expenditures. I use event-history models and panel regressions to test the aforementioned relationships on a sample of 132 countries from 1996 to 2012. There are four main findings. First, developing nations that are close to the advanced countries (in the core of the global political economy) are likely to follow the norms of the core and initiate actions to be considered as participants of the innovation economy. Second, countries are likely to mimic neighbors in their innovation spending patterns. Third, most developing regions of the world show signs of decoupling (producing significantly less innovation patents at the same level of R&D spending than the core). And, fourth, local competition is associated to mimetic isomorphism regarding innovation but also to lower levels of decoupling in the production of patents (by increasing the efficiency of R&D investments). These results suggest that there is imitation of the global core and of neighbors (oftentimes) despite sub-standard levels of efficiency, and that participating in innovation is as important as producing actual innovation.