Innovation Strategies in a Competitive Dynamic Setting

This paper presents a dynamic model of a competitive R&D and production duopoly subject to knowledge spillovers. Two asymmetric firms operate for a limited period of time and dispose their knowledge capital in the end. Both firms and the social planner prefer the R&D-cooperative strategy over the competitive one regardless of the intensity of knowledge spillovers. Accumulation of knowledge capital results allows the monopolist to have lower marginal cost of production and charge a lower market price than a fully competitive duopoly. Being able to define the degree of knowledge exchange when creating a research joint venture, the firms do not necessary choose the highest degree of cooperation available.innovation, R&D, spillovers, cooperation

Home green home; a case study of inducing energy-efficient innovations in the Dutch building sector

This document provides a case study of policies aiming to foster technological innovations for ‘green’ buildings in the Netherlands. The study aims to provide 1) a detailed overview of the policy framework over the last thirty years, and 2) a picture of the level of innovations related to energy efficiency in buildings in the Netherlands. �The analysis shows an intensification of environmental policy in the Dutch building sector in the mid-1990s, followed by a slight decline after 2001. A striking feature of environmental policy in this sector is the large number of policy programs implemented successively for short periods of time. This might affect the stability and continuity of the policy framework and be damaging for innovation. Faced with high levels of uncertainty about future policies, firms may prefer to postpone risky investments in innovative activities. Finally, governmental R&D support for green innovations in general remains very low in the Netherlands. Descriptive data on patenting activities show that Dutch firms file nowadays about 150 patents annually in the field of energy efficiency in buildings. The Netherlands have a clear comparative advantage in the field of energy-saving lighting technologies, mainly due to intensive patenting activities by Philips. High-efficiency boilers also represent a substantial share of Dutch innovation activities in this domain over the last decades. In many other fields (such as insulation, heat-pumps and co-generation, solar boilers, etc), however, Germany, Austria and Scandinavian countries rank much higher than the Netherlands.

Strategic R&D with Knowledge Spillovers and Endogenous Time to Complete

It is shown that asymmetry in R&D efficiency between firms is an important factor determining feasibility of the preemption and attrition scenarios in competitive R&D with time to build. Scenarios of attrition and preemption games are most likely to occur when competitors have similar R&D efficiencies. In case of largely asymmetric firms the games of attrition and preemption are very unlikely, thus the R&D duration choices of firms are determined by the actual trade-off between the benefits of earlier innovation and the costs of faster R&D project completion.R&D Investment;Competition;Preemption;Attrition

The Patterns of Inter-firm and Inter-industry Knowledge Flows in the Netherlands

This paper presents a study of backward and forward patent citations in patents granted to firms and institutions in the Netherlands by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The study establishes different patterns of patent citation in recent Dutch patents belonging to different industrial classes. We run our model in the set of backward citations made in Dutch applicants’ patents during 1996-2006 and in the set of forward citations to patents issued to firms and organizations in the Netherlands during 1993-2006. We compare the patterns of knowledge utilization (represented by backward patent citations) and knowledge dissemination (represented by forward patent citations) and obtain evidence of inter- or intra-firm and inter- or intra-industry knowledge spillovers. In the context of effective competition and innovation policies we advocate for paying special attention to industry specifics when designing policy programs and measures directed at stimulating R&D cooperation and knowledge spillovers. We present evidence that policies for promoting better knowledge exchange among firms should also distinguish between the measures for promoting the inward and the outward knowledge flows for companies in the Netherlands.knowledge flows, R&D spillovers, backward and forward patent citations

ПРИНЦИПИ ОРГАНІЗАЦІЇ ДІЄСЛІВНОЇ ЛЕКСИКИ В ЛЕКСИКО-СЕМАНТИЧНИХ ГРУПАХ. (Principles of the verbal vocabulary organisation in the lexico-semantic groups.)

У статті обґрунтовано важливість створення узагальненої лексико-семантичної класифікації дієслів для української мови. Розглянуто основні поняття лексико-семантичної системи мови, а саме: лексико-семантичне поле, лексико-семантична група та її властивості, ядро та периферія поля. (In the article the importance of creating a generalized lexical-semantic classification of verbs for the Ukrainian language is grounded. The basic concepts of lexical-semantic system of language, namely lexical-semantic field, lexical-semantic group and its properties, center and periphery of a field are outlined.