This paper focuses on the role of capabilities in economic development. In recent years, the quality and availability of data on different aspects of development have improved, and this provides new opportunities for investigating the reasons behind the large differences in economic development. Using factor analysis on data for 25 indicators and 115 countries between 1992 and 2004, we identify fo

This paper focuses on the relation between large car manufacturers' incentive and opportunity to innovate and their electric vehicle (EV) business strategies. We analyze how environmental regulation and the firm's incentive (measured by net income) and opportunity to innovate (measured by EV asset position, determined from a combination of patent, partnership and prototype data) affected EV sales

Why do some countries perform much better than other countries? This paper outlines a synthetic framework, based on Schumpeterian logic, for analyzing this question. Four different aspects of competitiveness are identified: technology, capacity, demand, and price. The contribution of the paper is particularly to highlight the three first aspects, which often tend to be ignored due to measurement p

Specialization in high-tech products is frequently used to capture technological intensity of exports. A number of developing countries are among the most deeply specialized countries in exports of these products. The paper shows that the bulk of high-tech exports can actually be attributed to the effect of international fragmentation of production in electronics on trade statistics. It is confirm

This paper discusses the strategy of the Czech economic policy as regards the current enlargement process of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The authors discuss the validity of the Maastricht criteria for the new European Union (EU) member countries, as well as the risks and puzzles of both real and nominal convergence processes. The paper shows that current fiscal policy is the ma

The ability of firms to influence environmental regulation has largely been overlooked in transition studies. We study how car manufacturers combine and change their innovation and political influence strategies in response to a technology-forcing regulation. We apply a conceptual framework on corporate responses to public innovation policy to the case of the zero emission vehicle mandate over the

The paper focuses on selective investment incentives, which are aimed primarily to attract foreign direct investment, in the context of the new EU Member States, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. We discuss the issue within three closely related dimensions. We point to a potential conflict of interests between host country governments and multinational companies in promoting

The possibility that structural changes in international trade might impact countries differently has been a matter of great concern for many observers from the 1950s onwards, and the view that the specialisation pattern of a country in international trade matters for its economic performance has been widespread. This paper analyses the structural changes in international trade from the 1960s omwa

Paper focuses on foreign direct investment (FDI) in manufacturing in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia (CECs), where FDI penetration jumped to remarkable high levels in recent years. Foreign investment enterprises are more profitable, export oriented and technologically superior compared to domestic companies. FDI is perceived as a main channel of technology transfer and potential s

The paper presents alternative analytical approaches to evaluation of structural changes in selected transition economies (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia). The analysis starts from the comparison of intensity of structural changes, as an introductory (quantitative) concept measuring structural adjustment capacity. Besides the intensity of structural changes, the need for devel

Nonparametric efficiency analysis has become a widely applied technique to support industrial benchmarking as well as a variety of incentive-based regulation policies. In practice such exercises are often plagued by incomplete knowledge about the correct specifications of inputs and outputs. Simar and Wilson (Commun Stat Simul Comput 30(1):159–184, 2001) and Schubert and Simar (J Prod Anal 36(1):5

Although bottom water hypoxia (O2 −1) is presently widespread in the Baltic Sea coastal zone, there is a lack of insight into past changes in bottom water oxygen in these areas on timescales of millennia, and the possible driving factors. Here, we present a sediment-based environmental reconstruction of surface water productivity, salinity and bottom water oxygen for the past 5400 years at Gåsfjär

Transition studies' understanding of differences in public policy is limited due to its tendency to focus on single-country cases. This paper assesses differences in plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) policies, comprising RD&D subsidies, infrastructure investments and sales incentives, across 13 countries over the period 2008-2014. I explore three conditions that may influence these policy expendi

The EU’s stagnation on many innovation indicators led to a number of efforts to spur a turnaround. One of most visible projects has been the Horizon 2020 strategy, which devotes unprecedented levels of funding to the promotion of R&D and innovation. But does this strategy address the right issues to promote innovation? Is Horizon 2020 right to ignore geographical considerations when allocating

In this article, we analyze the impact of firms’ technology bases on their financial performance. By taking a strategic perspective of technology, we argue that it is not sufficient to analyze only the size or novelty/quality of the technology base as technology bases can best be understood as portfolios of individual technologies. In such a framework, risk consideration should be taken into accou

Using data from the German Community Innovation Survey (CIS) from 2008, we analyze whether innovation partnering increases the risk of experiencing infringement of intellectual property (IP). The results show that depending on types of IP innovation, partnerships increase the risk of infringement by up to 37% compared with the average risk in the sample. The results suggest that this massive incre

There is consistent evidence in the literature that an average employee's age is negatively related to firm-level innovativeness. This observation has been explained by older employees working with outdated technological knowledge and being characterized by reduced cognitive flexibility. We argue that firms can mitigate this effect through employee turnover. In particular, turnover of R&D work

Since Solow (Q J Econ 70:65-94, 1956) the economic literature has widely accepted innovation and technological progress as the central drivers of long-term economic growth. From the microeconomic perspective, this has led to the idea that the growth effects on the macroeconomic level should be reflected in greater competitiveness of the firms. Although innovation effort does not always translate i