Abstract

The interaction between the sectoral composition of the economy, the scientific and technological research activity of firms and universities, and the activity of large firms is considered as a crucial factor of growth in the advanced countries. This paper enquires about the relationship between the dynamics of international technological specialization, on the one hand, and market expansion and profit opportunities, accumulation of technical and scientific knowledge and market structures, on the other hand. We employ R&D and export data, patent applications and citations at the European Patent Office for six countries (US, UK, Italy, Japan, France, Germany) from 1981 to 1994 for 135 technological classes in three industrial sectors (Chemicals, Electronics and Machinery). The econometric analysis uses GMM techniques for dynamic panels and shows that international technological specialization is persistent and is positively affected by the relative effort of firms in R&D, the direction of cross-sectoral knowledge spillovers within countries and by the quality of research output by universities and public research centres. The size of the estimated relationships differs across the three industrial sectors. In addition, the paper shows that the concentration of innovative activities may have a negative impact on international technological specialization.