Time: 13:00 – 15:00 (GMT+01:00), Wednesday, 7 October 2020 
Presenter: Professor Christine Oughton, SOAS University of London
Chair: Professor Victor Murinde, SOAS University of London
Online venue: Click here to join the CGF Seminar Room on Microsoft Teams

For any inquiry about how to join the online seminar, please contact Dr Meng Xie (xm1@soas.ac.uk) 

Abstract

Innovation is central to economic development and improvements in living standards. This paper utilises a systems of innovation framework to investigate the internal and external factors shaping enterprise innovation in low and middle-income countries focusing, in particular, on the role of different sources of finance (internal finance, bank credit, government and NGO funding, etc.), enterprise capabilities and the regional institutional environment. Our empirical analysis uses data on over 11,000 enterprises from the World Bank Innovation Follow-Up Surveys, matched one-to-one with the World Bank Enterprise Surveys for 15-18 developing economies. We find distinct patterns in investment in R&D and types of innovation across low and middle income countries consistent with Schumpeter Mark I and Mark II theories, as well as differences in firms’ motives and government support for innovation activities. Our econometric analysis provides new evidence that the type of finance matters for innovation, in particular, we find that bank, government and NGO finance impact product and process innovation differently in low and middle-income countries.
Similarly, firm-level capabilities and regional institutional quality have differing effects on product and process innovation in low and middle-income countries. Our results suggest that policies designed to enhance innovation need to be tailored to the type of innovation and the level of development.

Authors: Christine Oughton, Desire Kanga, Laurence Harris and Victor Murinde

Presenter

Christine Oughton is Professor of Management Economics and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (appointed 2006). She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge. Before joining SOAS she was Professor of Economics and Management at the University of Bolzano, Italy and Professor of Management at Birkbeck. She also held a Senior Lectureship at the University of Birmingham, where she was Director of the Research Centre for Industrial Strategy, and a Lectureship at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on innovation, environmental management & economics, corporate governance, financial inclusion and growth. She was co-investigator on the ESRC Research Seminar Series, Complexity Economics for Sustainability that brought together, academics, practitioners and policy makers on environmental issues, and is currently working on two ESRC projects on (i) Financial Inclusion and (ii) the Financial System in China. Christine has published widely on innovation, environmental sustainability, governance, financial diversity, competitiveness and growth. Between 2012-16 she was Head of the School of Finance and Management and served on the SOAS Board of Trustees. In 2017 she was Research Fellow of the South African Reserve Bank and in September 2020 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Financial Inclusion Forum.