scholarly journals The effects of EU R&I funding on SME innovation and business performance in new EU member states: Firm-level evidence

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (228) ◽  
pp. 7-41
Author(s):  
Nevenka Cuckovic ◽  
Valentina Vuckovic

SMEs are the most dynamic and vibrant part of the enterprise sector in terms of start-ups and new jobs, and a significant share of the EU?s total innovation activities take place within them. This paper uses the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2014 and eCORDA data to analyse whether SME participation in EU research and innovation (R&I) funding programmes has increased their innovation activities and business performance. To achieve this, we empirically test whether SMEs that received EU funds recorded an improvement in their innovation and economic performance. This is measured by research and development (R&D) expenditure, product innovation, turnover, and employment. The paper focusses particularly on new EU member countries and among them to those from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It explores the theoretical and methodological backgrounds that guided us in these analyses and performs treatment effect analysis at firm level, using CIS CDROM data that we received on request from Eurostat. The obtained results indicate that EU R&I funding is beneficial to the innovation activities of SME recipients, and to their overall business performance. It also assists new EU member states in the process of ?catching up? to the growth levels of more established EU economies.

2008 ◽  
Vol 204 ◽  
pp. 85-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Falk

In the present study we investigate the relationship between foreign ownership and innovation activities using the firmlevel data of the third Community Innovation Survey (CIS) covering twelve European countries. Probit estimates based on 28,000 firms' observations show that foreign-owned firms are more innovative than domestic firms, particularly in the New EU Member States. However, results from the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition of the differences in the percentage of innovating firms between foreign-owned and domestic firms reveals that the differences are mainly due to the different firm characteristics rather than the differences in coefficients. In particular, the dominance of foreign-owned firms in the largest firm size group is the main factor contributing to the gap in the percentage of innovators between foreign-owned firms and domestic firms. Furthermore, using the fractional logit model, we find that in the New EU Member states, foreign ownership has a positive and significant impact on the share of market novelties as well as on the share of new products in turnover. In this case, the results from the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis indicate that the ownership difference in the share of innovative sales is not due to the differences in the observed firms' characteristics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor Prokop ◽  
Jan Stejskal

In the present day, innovation has become a key element of competitive advantage. However, most countries are failing in their innovative activities, and their innovative performance is below that of the EU average. Therefore, the European Commission annually publishes its Innovation Union Scoreboard, which provides a comparative assessment of the EU member states’ research and innovation performance. The countries are divided into four groups according to their innovation performance: innovation leaders, strong innovators, moderate innovators, and modest innovators. In this paper, we have selected countries whose innovation performance was close to, below, or well below that of the EU average in 2015, and we have performed microeconomic analysis of the situation in these countries’ firms to analyze the conditions of their innovation environment and uncover barriers to their innovation activities. We analyzed firms in the manufacturing industries in Slovenia (a strong innovator), Croatia (a moderate innovator), and Romania (a modest innovator) by using original multiple regression models and data from the 2010–2012 Community Innovation Survey. The results demonstrate the different backgrounds for innovation in each country. In Romania, there is a lack of both a satisfactory environment for innovation and sufficient capacity for absorbing public funds; investment into innovation-related activities is also absent. In Croatia, the innovation potential has not been fully exploited. However, we show that the appropriate targeting of innovation determinants (e.g., collaboration with different partners or public financing) could lead to the creation of synergies and spillover effects that would be able to support their innovative activities and strengthen the country’s competitiveness. There is a completely different situation in Slovenia. Firms there effectively utilize the various determinants of innovation activities, and these determinants have strong influence when utilized on their own. On the other hand, results also show that certain significant combinations of determinants of innovation activities are missing in Slovenia. In conclusion, we have proposed practical implications for policy makers that would be able to support innovative activities and help each country to improve its innovation ranking.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.28.1.16111


Author(s):  
Mary Canning ◽  
Martin Godfrey ◽  
Dorota Holzer-Zelazewska

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