Our press review features the latest publications by UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. Output for August includes two working papers, based on data from indicators and countries worldwide. These study the importance of innovation and how to maximize innovative output.
Working Papers
‘Does Too Much Work Hamper Innovation? Evidence for Diminishing Returns of Work Hours for Patent Grants’ suggests that individual time is an important factor that needs to be considered in innovation research. This working paper finds that work time has a positive but diminishing effect on innovative output, such that after a certain point the innovation-enhancing role of work time is taken over by individual free time. Using a sample of OECD countries and Russia, the authors estimate a quadratic relationship between work time and per capita innovative output. For a hypothetical economy that has no other holidays but weekends, they estimate that individuals should not work more than about 6.6 hours a day for maximizing innovative output. They also present a categorization of countries based on their innovative output and work hours that may kindle interest for certain case-specific future research. By PhD Fellows Mehmet Guney Celbis and Serdar Turkeli.
‘How Important is Innovation? A Bayesian Factor-augmented Productivity Model on Panel Data’ draws on 21 technology, infrastructure and institution indicators from 82 countries over a 19-year period (1990 to 2008). This working paper exploits the panel dimension of the data and distinguishes individual-specifi c and time-specifi c factors. The authors construct summary indicators of the three indicators (technology, infrastructure and institutions) and estimate their effect on the growth and international differences in GDP per capita. By Prof. Pierre Mohnen et al.
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