O33 - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion ProcessesNávrat zpět

Too much of a good thing can ultimately become detrimental. Is this the case in the manufacturing industry's carbon governance under the guise of digitization? This study examines the non-linear effect of low-carbon environmental governance at the provincial level in China's manufacturing sector which is the first of its kind. Using the slacks-based measure data envelopment approach (SBM-DEA), this study assesses changes in environmental governance performance over time, accounting for desirable and undesirable outputs. The findings indicate an inverted U-shaped relationship between manufacturing digitization and low-carbon environmental governance performance in China. This suggests that digitization improves environmental outcomes initially, but excessive digitization causes adverse environmental impacts due to increased energy use, resource depletion and waste production. It offers insights into the complicated interplay of benefits and challenges in manufacturing digitization and its implications for achieving sustainable, low-carbon development in China. It highlights the importance of thoughtful digital transition to support low-carbon development goals.

Considerable diffusion of technology occurs via global trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) while firm heterogeneities cause considerable production heterogeneities. Hi-tech products and investment goods of differentiated varieties from emerging and developed economies are vehicles of superior technology. Given this stylized evidence, we analyse factors facilitating (or inhibiting) technological spillover to domestic firms in the host nations in a counterfactual scenario of a Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP) deal. By using a mixture interface of global computable general equi-librium (CGE) models of FDI (GTAP-FDI) and firm heterogeneity model of Global Trade Analysis Project, GTAP Heterogeneous (GTAP-HET), we calibrate impacts of trade and FDI spillovers on: (i) global production, (ii) trade patterns, (iii) welfare and (iv) regional productivity gains. Importance of regional trade agreements and policy for productivity spillovers is highlighted.

This study is devoted to explore the role and impact size of human capital for economic growth. We discern two levels of human capital impacts: First, we point to its contribution to knowledge capital production and second, the multiplicative effects of human capital in the aggregate production function are suggested. We employ lately developed methodology for spatial panel estimations with two-way fi xed effects. Our results show that throughout the EU NUTS-2 regions over the 2000s human capital spillovers, indeed, account for large total factor productivity variation. Moreover, our results suggest that local effects of human capital are secondary to these human capital spillovers in terms of magnitude and, what might be more compelling, that the multiplicative effects of human capital surmount its impacts attributable to knowledge production.

The paper deals with an analysis of economic impacts of ICT implementation within the public administration, which is called e-Government. The current situation in the Czech Republic is discussed using data about particular implemented tools, such as the contact points of public administration, data mailboxes or basic registries of public administration and more. In the paper there are evaluated impacts of these projects not only on public administration and public sector, but on the overall economic environment of the state including discussion of the rate of bureaucratic burden, transparency of the legal system or cyberspace security. In spite of the fact that a number of significant e-Government projects has been already implemented in the Czech Republic, there is still unused potential of other projects, whose adaptation could have positive economic impacts.

Services have expanded rapidly over last twenty years and they play a dominant role in advanced economies today. The economic research reflects these structural changes by increasing interest in integrating services into the traditional value chain. This study aims at creating conceptual framework for measuring innovation in services and for identifying different innovation patterns in service sector. The need for the concept of innovation patterns in services results firstly from the different character of the innovation process in services and in manufacturing and secondly from the high degree of heterogeneity inside the service sector. The concept presented in this study summarizes recent approaches to service innovation and creates four groups of services according the types of their innovation activities. These groups are: science-based services, problem solving services, scale-oriented services and market-oriented services. This study represents a basis for follow-up analysis of innovation efficiency in Czech business services sector.

The paper evaluates innovative performance in terms of theoretical and methodological concept of learning economy applied to the EU countries. Implications of this assessment for quality-based competitiveness are also discussed, and the positions of EU countries are compared as to different sources of competitiveness (cost vs. knowledge-based advantage) and technology knowledge (internal innovative capacity vs. technology transfer). The theoretical and methodological concept of learning economy has so far not been applied to the new EU members. The paper starts with the introductory description of the key theoretical and methodological concepts and clarification of the applied terms and methods. The exploited data set is described and major results of the analysis of organisational models presented. The structural aspect includes classification according to industries, occupations and countries. The impact of national differences on organisational models is evaluated. The typology of organiyational models is subsequently compared against the typology of innovators and sources of competitiveness.

The paper evaluates the position of the Czech Republic in the development of qualitatively based competitive advantage, firstly in terms of the export structure changes according to industry classifications of factor and technology intensities. The given approach has been used extensively in international comparisons, though its explanatory value differs according to the actual quality intensity of economic activities. Even the countries with a limited extent of R&D may show up a high shares of technology intensive exports produced in FDI branches, which, however, mostly consist of assembly operations on imported components. The second view of the qualitatively based competitiveness focuses on the role of foreign companies in internationalization of production and trade, and, specifically, in domestic knowledge intensive activities. Their development makes a condition for an efficient technology transfer, the intensity of which differs according to the motivations of foreign investment in R&D.

The article gives an account of a recent attempt to rebuild economics along the lines of increasing returns. The current orthodoxy is criticised for overemphasizing the role of decreasing returns. For the sake of analytical rigor economists sacrifice a correct picture of the modern world, say the critics. Small events are magnified by the positive feedback. The system is thus set on a path and cannot shake off its history. Path dependent processes are illustrated by the persistence of the QWERTY keyboard. As the world is stuck with this inferior standard, government action is needed to adopt a better alternative. However, the second part of the article offers a successful refutation of the QWERTY story. This particular example of path dependency evolved into an ambitious interdisciplinary project whose aim is to introduce new, visionary approaches into the scientific thinking. The prospects of chaos theory in economics are therefore briefly outlined.

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 source of spillovers in host economy, though, estimates of technology transfer show mixed picture in the CECs. FDI spurs restructuring and productivity growth in foreign investment enterprises but FDI rather crowds-out domestic companies as spillovers are confirmed only to domestic companies with sufficient technological absorptive capacity. Paper concludes with some policy implications regarding FDI promotion and innovation policy.