Innovation and Knowledge Creation in an Open Economy: Canadian Industry and International Implications
本书基于1993年加拿大创新调查数据，分析企业规模、行业和所有者国籍如何影响创新，对理解小型开放经济体的创新机制有参考价值。
The endogenous growth literature has placed knowledge creation at the forefront of the research agenda. Long run economic growth is sustained because of the continuous creation of knowledge. To understand the dynamics of knowledge one must pay particular attention to the determinants of research and development (R&D) and innovation. Baldwin and Hanel, who are two experts of the economics of innovation in Canada, have produced a well‐written and informative book on the extent to which innovation in Canada is a function of three main dimensions: firm size, industry and nationality of the firms’ owners. The subject of the book is important for Canada whose R&D intensity is below both the European Union and OECD average. Moreover using Canada, a small open economy, as a case study is of particular interest both as a comparison with larger economies and as a lesson for other countries with similar characteristics. Baldwin and Hanel make good use of the 1993 Canadian Innovation and Advanced Technology Survey (SIAT) to provide well‐documented answers to their question. As the authors point out, innovation surveys must be able to distinguish across different types of innovations and allow the correlation between innovative input and output to vary by firms’ characteristics. The SIAT, which asks questions about a firm’s innovative capacities and focuses on the firm’s major innovation, is indeed better suited than other surveys to address innovations. Most other innovation surveys only prompt firms to report whether they have innovated – irrespective of the importance of the innovation. The authors convincingly argue that the innovation approach is better suited because a firm can better answer questions related to one innovation but the very often it does not amass data on all innovations.