Technology spillover and regional convergence process: a statistical analysis of the Italian case

Abstract

Recent literature broadly highlight the importance of modelling technological innovation effects on economic growth. This paper develops a methodology that allows to measure technology contribution to economic convergence; the choice of a regional framework also allows to underline interregional knowledge transmission as a the major channel of technological progress. Moreover, the specification of a dynamic growth model enables to evaluate both the regional convergence and the effect of innovation on long-run labour productivity without resorting to any technology index measurement. We contribute to the methodological literature also by comparing different dynamic panel data estimation procedures and by detecting both the presence of small sample bias and the existence of a nearly unit root autoregressive process in labour productivity series. The results of an empirical analysis on Italian regions show how most of innovation resources derives from relevant spillover mechanisms. Furthermore, technology spillover intensity seems to be strongly affected by geography and productive structure of regions.

The role of geographic spillovers in employment policy planning: an empirical investigation for Russian regions

“…Piras et al (2012) analyse the data for 187 European NUTS-2 regions for 1980-2003 and show that technological improvements at the firm level increase total labour productivity. Costa and Iezzi (2004) take the data for 20 Italian regions for 1984-1996 and find positive spillover effect from technological innovations plays a relevant role for regional economic development: the coefficients related to innovation are significant and positive. Kaneva and Untura (2017) study the data on Russian regions for 2007-2011 and show that knowledge spillovers from Moscow and St. Petersburg (where the majority of innovation activities take place in Russia) to other regions are small.…”

Absorptive capacity of human capital and international R&D spillover on labour productivity in Egypt

“…Other contributions were made to the literature of international R&D spillover by examining its impact on other economic variables. Costa and Stefano (2004), focussed on the effect of technology innovation spillover on economic growth. They made use of the dynamic growth model, which facilitated the evaluation of regional convergence and innovation on the long run labour productivity without the technology index that is usually used in the technology gap model for developing countries.…”

The dynamic impact of industrial cluster life cycle on regional innovation capacity

“…The prosperous regional economy will bring huge profits, which will further attract external enterprises to gather around the cluster. This interaction is well known due to much research (Audretsch, 1998;Costa & Iezzi, 2004;Gordon & McCann, 2005;Varga, 2006), and we take this interaction as a basis to discuss the regional innovation impact from the view of cluster life cycle.…”