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China
and the Knowledge Economy: Challenges and Opportunities
-- Douglas
Zhihua Zeng and Shuilin Wang
The
rapid pace of economic growth in China has been unprecedented
since the start of economic reforms in the late 1970s. It
has delivered higher incomes and made the largest single
contribution to global poverty reduction. Measured by the
international poverty lines during 1978-2004, the absolute
poor population in rural areas has dropped from 250 million
to 26.1 million. Such gains are very impressive and have
been driven largely by a set of market-oriented institutional
reforms, strong investment, and effective adoption and application
of various knowledge and technologies, especially foreign
ones, through trade and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
While enjoying tremendous success, China also faces many
challenges that have to be addressed in order to sustain
its long-term development. These include weak institutions,
low overall educational attainment, weak indigenous innovation
capacity, poor linkages between Research and Development
(R&D) and industries. This paper intends to provide
an insightful analysis of some strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and challenges of China's knowledge economy in the areas
of economic incentives and institutional regime, human capital,
innovation system, and information infrastructure.
©
2008 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The
World Bank. All Rights Reserved.
Hindrances,
Benefits and Measurement of Knowledge Transfer in Universities:
A German Perspective
-- Lisa
Hubig, Andreas Jonen and Volker Lingnau
This
paper has shown that knowledge transfer between university
and economy can be on the one hand a very helpful way to
overcome some of the actual problems of the university,
and on the other hand can fecundate both university and
economy. In contrast the status quo of knowledge transfer
between the two are not yet tapped. This could lead to several
hindrances which occur at the emotional level and due to
different uncertainties.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
International
Firm Activities and Innovation: Evidence
from Knowledge Production Functions for German Firms
-- Joachim Wagner
Using
a knowledge production framework and a rich set of plant
level data, this study demonstrates that in Germany firms
that are active in international markets as exporters or
foreign direct investors do generate more new knowledge
than firms which sell in the national market only. These
differences are not only due to a larger firm size, or different
industries, or the use of more researchers in these firms,
but due to the fact that these globally engaged firms learn
more from external sources too. The importance of these
knowledge sources varies with the type of innovation. These
results, which are broadly in line with the findings of
a recent study using the UK firm level data, can help to
explain the strong positive correlation between productivity
and international activities of firms. Firms that are active
on markets beyond the national borders generate higher levels
of new knowledge that feed into higher productivity.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
A
Scoreboard to Evaluate Cluster Competitiveness: Evidence
from an Empirical Study on Emilia Romagna Region
-- Andrea
Ganzaroli, Gianluca Fiscato and Luciano Pilotti
In
recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the
spatial dimension of economic activities. The concept of
competitiveness has reached an incredible importance between
academicians and practitioners. However, local competitiveness
remains an elusive concept. The main objectives of this
paper are two fold: first, to define the concept of local
competitiveness in an ecological perspective; second, to
present a scoreboard useful to evaluate cluster competitiveness.
A case study on seven different clusters in Emilia Romagna
is presented in order to test the scoreboard and show how
it helps to understand local competitiveness
and define local policies.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
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