Again on the Impact of R&D Spillovers at firm level in Italy

This paper provides a systematic empirical investigation of the effect of R&D Spillovers on firms'production in Italy. Using panel data for manufacturing firms over the period 1998-2003, we estimate a system of equations based on a translog production function. The analysis indicates that firms'production is positively affected by the external technology they absorb. This result is robust to the method used to weight the flows of innovation across firms. Moreover, there is evidence in our sample that R&D spillovers and firms'technological capital are Morishima complements. The complementarity is high for small firms and in the centre and south of Italy