Informality and Innovation

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Professor Pedro Mendi , Navarra Center for International Development (NCID)

This paper studies the impact on innovation of competition against
firms in the informal sector. Using the World Bank’s Enterprise Sur-
vey data from a sample of African and Latin American countries, I
find a positive correlation between introducing product and process
innovations and the importance of competition against firms in the
informal sector. I propose a theoretical model of innovation in the
presence of competition against informal firms that is consistent with
this empirical observation.

About the speaker
Pedro Mendi is a Researcher at the Navarra Center for International Development (NCID), Universidad de Navarra. After obtaining his BA in Economics from Universidad de Navarra in 1996, he began his graduate work in the doctoral program in Economics at Northwestern University, where he obtained his PhD in 2001. Since then, he has been part of the Economics Faculty at Universidad de Navarra, and of the NCID since 2011. His research analyzes the process innovation and technology transfer, with a special focus on developing countries. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, or Research Policy.

Venue: Conference room

Date: 13 March 2014

Time: 12:30 - 13:30  CET