PERFORMANCE OF NATIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS DURING THE GLOBAL CRISIS: A CROSS-COUNTRY ANALYSIS

PERFORMANCE OF NATIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS DURING THE GLOBAL CRISIS: A CROSS-COUNTRY ANALYSIS

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, followed by the Euro Crisis, changed the world economic and social balances. By turning upside down the letter-perfect and internalized global economic and social judgments and expectations, the Global Financial Crisis gave birth to a new world order and to a ‘new normal’. Since the internal dynamics of the firms, sectors, countries and regions differ highly, the effect of the global crisis to firms, sectors, countries and regions in terms of intensity of the shock and the recovery process was also uneven. This new normal, together with the technological development, increased the importance of the innovation and efficient use of scarce resources to avoid deadlock in the inclusive and sustainable growth. Thus, the aim of this study is to focus on the innovation efficiency of the countries to see the effect of the global crisis on the capabilities of the countries. In this study, two alternative models with two different approaches of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) under two different specifications (input-oriented and output-oriented) are utilized to trace innovation performance across 56 countries during the global crisis from 2007 to 2012. The empirical evidence reveals that the negative effects of 2008 crisis are reflected on innovation efficiencies of countries in 2008 in the base model and 2009 in the lag model. In addition, grouping countries according to their GDP and GDP per capita and implementing two different models show that there could be difference in the innovation efficiency results since the DEA model shows the innovation efficiency in comparison with the other countries’ efficiency. Lastly, with the data it is observed that higher GDP or higher GDP per capita do not lead to high innovation efficiency

___

  • Charnes, A., Cooper, W.W. & Rhodes, E. (1978). Measuring the EfŞciency of Decision Making Units. European Journal of Operational Research, 2, 429–444.
  • European Innovation Union Scorecard. (2014). Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/policy/innovation- scoreboard/index_en.htm
  • Freeman, C. (1995). The National System of Innovation in Historical Perspective. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 19, 5-24.
  • Global Competitiveness Index. (2013). Retrieved from: http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-competitiveness
  • Global Innovation Index. (2013). Retrieved from: http://www.globalinnovationindex.org/content.aspx?page=GII-Home
  • Goto, A. & Suzuki, K. (1989). R&D Capital, Rate of Return on R&D Investment and Spillover of R&D in Japanese Manufacturing Industries.
  • Review of Economics and Statistics, 71, 555–564. Griliches, Z. (1998). Introduction to R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence. In Griliches, Zvi (Ed.), R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence (pp. 1-45). University of Chicago Press.
  • Guellec, D. & Van Pottelsberghe Potterie, B. (2004) . From R&D to Productivity Growth: Do the Institutional Settings and the Source of
  • Funds of R&D Matter? Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. 66 (3), 353–378. Hagedoorn, J. (1996). Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Schumpeter Revisisted. Industrial and Corporate Change. 5(3) , 883-896.
  • Hollanders, H. & Esser, F. (2007). Measuring Innovation Efficiency. INNO-Metrics Thematic Paper. Retrieved from: http://www.pedz.uni- mannheim.de/daten/edz-h/gdb/07/eis_2007_Innovation_efficiency.pdf
  • Lundvall ,Bengt-Åke (2004). National Innovation Systems- Analytical Concept and Development. Retrieved from: http://www.druid.dk/conferences/Summer2005/Papers/Lundvall.pdf
  • Nasierowski, W. & Arcelus, F.J. F.J. (2003) On the Efficiency of National Innovation Systems. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 37, 215–
  • Nelson, R. (1993). National Innovation Systems: A Comparative Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press
  • Porter, M. (1990). The Competitive Advantage of Nations. Macmillan:Basingstoke.
  • Rousseau, S. & Rousseau, R. (1997). DEA as a Tool for Construction Scientometric Indicators. Scientometrics, 40(1), 45-56.
  • Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1939). Business cycles: a theoretical, historical, and statistical analysis of the capitalist process. Martino Publications.
  • Sharma, S. & Thomas, V.J. (2008). Inter-country R&D Efficiency Analysis:
  • An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis. Scientometrics, 76(3), 483–501. Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: W. Strahan.
  • Wang, E. & Huang, W. (2007). Relative EfŞciency of R&D Activities: A Cross-Country Study Accounting for Environmental Factors in the DEA