Governments often promote inward foreign investment to encourage technology “spillovers” from foreign to domestic firms. Using panel data on Venezuelan plants, we find that foreign equity participation is positively correlated with plant productivity (the “own-plant” effect), but this relationship is only robust for small enterprises. We then test for spillovers from joint ventures to plants wi...

This paper develops a non-Schumpeterian endogenous growth model of R&D in which the firm’s free-riding behavior, reinforced by a lack of appropriability in its industry, constitutes a major source of growth in the economy. While models analyzing the interaction between either imitation and innovation or spillovers and innovation have already appeared in the literature, we show how imitation via...

The effects of process and product innovation are analyzed in a multisectoral framework. The effect of an innovation in any particular sector propagates throughout the entire economy. A simple measure for the spillover of innovation effects to the other sectors is developed. As a consequence, an alternative viewpoint is obtained for the interpretation of the elements of the Leontief inverse and...

We provide a descriptive study of the cross-category effects of satisfaction for financial services on retention behavior. Behavioral contrast and learning theories provide the bases for our understanding of these effects. Our main findings are (i) Across banking and investment categories, when customers have different providers, satisfaction with one lowers the retention probability in the oth...

Article history: Received 3 March 2010 Available online 3 November 2010 JEL classification: L22 L51 O31 O38

This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical analysis of Spanish provinces between 1980 and 2007 confirms the positive impact of human capital on regio...

We investigate the impact of knowledge spillovers and R&D cooperation on innovation activities in three German regions. We begin by estimating the knowledge-production function in order to test for interregional difference with regard to the efficiency of innovation activities. In a second step, we analyze the contribution of spillovers from R&D effort of other private firms and of public resea...

This paper compares Bertrand and Cournot equilibria in a di®erentiated duopoly with R&D (research and development) competition. Cournot competition is shown to induce more R&D e®ort than Bertrand competition. However, the price is lower and output is higher in Bertrand than in Cournot competition. Furthermore, the Bertrand equilibrium is more e±cient than the Cournot equilibrium if either R&D p...

The long-term trends of urbanization suggest: not only have more cities formed, but the leading metropolises have grown larger, with a number of peripheral subcenters developing over time. Conventional models of urban growth are limited, in that commuting cost and congestion eventually result in decreasing returns in a monocentric city as population becomes very large. We construct a general-eq...