Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/58811 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 6136
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper examines the determinants of young innovative companies' (YICs) R&D activities taking into account the autoregressive nature of innovation. Using a large longitudinal dataset comprising Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 1990-2008, we find that previous R&D experience is a fundamental determinant for mature and young firms, albeit to a smaller extent in the case of the YICs, suggesting that their innovation behaviour is less persistent and more erratic. Moreover, our results suggest that firm and market characteristics play a distinct role in boosting the innovation activity of firms of different age. In particular, while market concentration and the degree of product diversification are found to be important in fostering R&D activities in the sub-sample of mature firms only, YICs' spending on R&D appears to be more sensitive to demand-pull variables, suggesting the presence of credit constraints. These results have been obtained using a recently proposed dynamic type-2 tobit estimator, which accounts for individual effects and efficiently handles the initial conditions problem.
Subjects: 
R&D
innovation
Young Innovative Companies (YICs)
dynamic type-2 tobit estimator
JEL: 
O31
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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