Academic article on knowledge diffusion (D5.2)

Most studies on knowledge diffusion and productivity focus on either R&D, foreign direct investment or patent citation flows, and rarely consider complementary, intangible investments such as business process redesign, the co-invention of new products and business models, and investments in human capital. Although the effects of complementary investments and their spillovers are often mentioned in the literature, there is a lack of in-depth research.

This study aims to fill this gap.

Specifically, the paper focuses on knowledge diffusion, taking into account complementarities between different intangible assets, and analyse the effects on productivity. It analyses the import knowledge diffusion channel, and assess intangible asset complementarities using a principal component analysis to obtain endogenous, composite intangible indices. The analysis is conducted on an unbalanced country-industry panel dataset of 15 European countries, constructed from a combination of sources such as INTAN-INVEST, WIOD and EU-KLEMS.

Read the paper here.