This paper explores the influence of innovation on the probability of survival of two hundred top British firms founded throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To this end, we have collected the firms' significant innovations and classified them by Schumpeterian types, patented and non-patented and domestic and imported. The number of patents registered by the firms throughout their lifetime −a rough measure of their incremental innovation activity-has also been recorded. In addition, twelve control variables −five characteristics of the firms and seven of their business leaders-have been included. Both log-normal and gamma duration models have been used in the analysis. They have been estimated, firstly for the whole set of firms and, secondly, for the manufacturing and the service firms separately to control for industry differences. The results of the log-normal and gamma estimations are highly coincident, with some nuances. The significant innovations −particularly new processes, non-patented and domestic ones-have been found to positively influence the probability of business survival. The number of patent applications seems to increase the survival probability of the manufacturing firms, but not of the service ones. Among the control variables, the firm's size, its international dimension, and the age of the business leader at entry seem to be the most influential ones on business survival, although there are some differences between manufacturing and services. The main results are robust to the division of the sample by entry period. Related literature and research motivationBusiness survival has been found to be influenced by many factors,
The automotive components industry-nowadays the third Spanish industrial sector-arose in Spain at the beginning of the 20 th Century. Its development was slow, as was the development of the local automobile industry, but before 1936 it had achieved a signifi cant size and was in process of growth and modernization. The Spanish Civil War and the industrial policy of the forties slowed down this process, but in the fi fties the industry grew quickly while the automobile industry took off. The rapid growth of the supplier industry between 1950 and 1970 took place in a protectionist framework, which limited its modernization and caused shortage of components. But after the liberalization of the seventies, it succeeded in modernizing and internationalizing, although this was to a great extent attributable to the multinational companies established in Spain.
Widening the scope to all forms of innovation and paying more attention to the service sector are some of the remaining challenges of innovation studies. The standard innovation indicators are not useful to deal with them, so other alternatives must be explored. Based on a prosopographic approach, we have constructed an ad hoc data set of significant innovations developed by the top two hundred British business leaders/firms active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We have considered innovation in the wide Schumpeterian sense and included patented and non-patented as well as domestic and imported innovations. The main results are: that most innovations (63%) were not patented; that product innovations increased their relative importance compared to process ones up to 1920, the contrary happening afterwards; that in the long run the most 'traditional' Schumpeterian forms of innovation (the finding of new markets and new sources of supply) lost weight in favour of the most 'modern' ones (organisational and marketing innovations); that the innovations appeared in clusters over time; that the service industry showed greater innovative dynamism than manufacturing; and that the British business elite maintained a very low technological dependence over time.
Este artículo pretende averiguar si las fuerzas armadas españolas se modernizaron entre 1891 y 1935. Para ello, se analiza el gasto de los ministerios militares (Guerra y Marina) desagregado entre gasto en material y gasto en personal. Se considera que un aumento del peso relativo del gasto en material es indicio de modernización. Según esto, las fuerzas armadas se modernizaron a lo largo del período estudiado, aunque la Armada lo hizo con mayor intensidad que el Ejército. Dicho avance coincidió con la reducción de la plantilla de oficiales y estuvo propiciado por los planes de reconstrucción de la Armada y la inversión en nuevo armamento para el Ejército, en buena medida impulsada por la guerra de Marruecos. This paper tries to find out whether the Spanish armed forces modernized between 1891 and 1935. To that end, the expenditure of the military Ministries (Army and Navy), disaggregated into material and personnel expenditure, is analyzed. We consider that an increase in the relative weight of material expenditures is a sign of modernization. According with this, during the period of the study the Spanish armed forced experienced an advance in modernization, more intense in the Army than in the Navy. This advance was propitiated by the reconstruction plans of the Navy and the investment in new armament by the Army, considerably spurred by the war in Morocco.
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