Suchergebnisse

We analyze the role of innovation in the technological development of four new EU members: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. For that purpose, we use a novel approach by modeling the empirical relationship between intra-industrial bilateral trade flows, which proxy the level of technological progress, and innovation expenditures within the context of a gravity model with a set of appropriate instrumental variables to account for the potential endogeneity of innovation to trade. We show that innovation efforts in high-tech industries exhibit a strong effect on the technological progress of the region and they are closely linked to foreign direct investment and multinationals. As foreign-owned subsidiaries become a part of the innovation systems and industrial structure of the host country they promote overall technological growth in the region.

A multinomial logit model and survey data from the 25 EU member states and the US are used to establish the effect of demographic and other variables on various entrepreneurial engagement levels. These engagement levels range from never thought about starting a business to thinking about it , taking steps for starting up , having a young business , having an older business and no longer being an entrepreneur . Data of the 2004 Entrepreneurship Flash Eurobarometer survey containing over 13,500 observations is used. Other than demographic variables such as gender, age, education level and whether parents are self-employed, the set of explanatory variables used includes country specific effects, measures of risk tolerance, internal and external locus of control and four perceptions of obstacles . The obstacle variables include the perception by respondents of administrative complexities, of availability of financial support, of accessibility of information for start-up and whether the current economic climate is favorable. Among the four perception variables only administrative complexities displays an unambiguous obstacle profile in that its presence has a significant negative impact on higher entrepreneurial engagement levels. Country effects suggest a clear underperformance of Europe relative to the US in less mature entrepreneurial phases.