A Pooled Overview of the European National Innovation Systems Through the Lenses of the Community Innovation Survey

Abstract

In this paper, we perform a detailed pooled cross-sectional analysis on the innovation performance in nine European countries by using data stemming from the Community Innovation Survey. The temporal dimension of our dataset includes three waves of CIS surveys from 2008 until 2014. As such, it allows us to evaluate the changes in the innovation processes within the countries in a more profound way. Our findings suggest that there are no significant differences among the countries regarding the firms’ determinants to enter the innovation process. However, the effect of innovation output over labor productivity varies among economies: there is a positive relationship in the more developed economies compared to a negative or neutral relationship in the less developed. We use these results to speculate that the national innovation system in developing economies becomes more vulnerable in periods of the financial crisis.