Measuring Regional Innovativeness - A Methodological Discussion and an Application to One German Industry

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Tom Broekel * Terms of use: Documents in Thomas BrennerMax Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany Abstract The regional or national innovation performance has been repeatedly measured in the literature; but it has so far not been discussed what this means, especially in relation to a region. What is the contribution of a region to innovation output? The usual approaches implicitly assume that higher innovation outputs per inhabitant, employee, or R&D employee can be assigned to a region. We argue that more insights are gained if we distinguish between various mechanisms that influence the innovation activities in a region. Different analyses need to be conducted, using different variables and including different local factors. Furthermore, we see no justification for using a linear dependence of innovation activity on the number of inhabitants or employees as a benchmark for performance. We use a method that takes into account these arguments and apply it to the Electrics & Electronics industry in Germany.JEL-classification: R11, R15, O31

Methodological Issues in Measuring Innovation Performance of Spatial Units

“…a nation, a region, or a firm) into output (innovations). Fritsch (2000Fritsch ( , 2003; Fritsch and Slavtchev (2006); Broekel and Brenner (2007);Broekel (2008) define innovation efficiency as the relation between the innovative output and the number of R&D employees in a spatial unit. There are two approaches in the literature how the innovation efficiency of a spatial unit is measured.…”

“…There are two approaches in the literature how the innovation efficiency of a spatial unit is measured. While Broekel and Brenner (2007);Broekel (2008) estimates the innovation efficiency nonparametrically and industry-specific, Fritsch (2003) and Fritsch and Slavtchev (2006) take total regional R&D employment as input factor. For the latter two studies this means that all arrows in Figure 2 running into the box 'economic activity' are excluded from the analysis.…”

“…Sensitivity analyses with respect to the chosen distributions are necessarily. The non-parametric approach by Broekel and Brenner (2007) and Broekel (2008) is naturally less troubled by this problem.…”

“…In some of the analyses conducted by Broekel and Brenner (2007) and Broekel and Meder (2008) the innovation efficiency concept is extend. Their "region-oriented innovation efficiency" approach considers not solely innovation generators on the input side of the efficiency analyses.…”

“…In particular the danger of misspecifying the IPF, which results in non-meaningful results seems to prohibit parametric approaches. Non-parametric frontier approaches similar to those used by Broekel and Brenner (2007) and Broekel and Meder (2008) avoid, at least, this problem. They allow not to specify the functional form of the IPF as well as as specific distribution of the fluctuation ex-ante.…”