IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cii/cepidt/2010-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Clustering the Winners: the French Policy of Competitiveness Clusters

Author

Listed:
  • Lionel Fontagné
  • Pamina Koenig
  • Florian Mayneris
  • Sandra Poncet

Abstract

In 2005 the French government launched a policy of competitiveness clusters, giving subsidies for innovative projects managed locally and collectively by firms, research centers and universities. This paper proposes an ex-ante analysis of the outcome of the selection process that took place before the implementation of the subsidies program, in order to assess whether the policy ended up in choosing winners or losers. We first ask how the clusters have been selected, and then focus on the selection of firms within the clusters, using export and productivity as a measure of performance. Our main conclusion is that public authorities have chosen the winners during the two-step selection procedure. Export premium, beyond what individual characteristics would predict, is however most visible within the category of clusters having no international ambition, where heterogeneity among firms is the largest.

Suggested Citation

  • Lionel Fontagné & Pamina Koenig & Florian Mayneris & Sandra Poncet, 2010. "Clustering the Winners: the French Policy of Competitiveness Clusters," Working Papers 2010-18, CEPII research center.
  • Handle: RePEc:cii:cepidt:2010-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepii.fr/PDF_PUB/wp/2010/wp2010-18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zvi Griliches & Jacques Mairesse, 1995. "Production Functions: The Search for Identification," NBER Working Papers 5067, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    3. Michael E. Porter, 2000. "Location, Competition, and Economic Development: Local Clusters in a Global Economy," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 14(1), pages 15-34, February.
    4. Richard E. Baldwin & Frédéric Robert-Nicoud, 2007. "Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(5), pages 1064-1093, September.
    5. Martin, Philippe & Mayer, Thierry & Mayneris, Florian, 2011. "Public support to clusters: A firm level study of French "Local Productive Systems"," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 108-123, March.
    6. Adam B. Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg & Rebecca Henderson, 1993. "Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 577-598.
    7. Stephen R. Bond, 2002. "Dynamic panel data models: a guide to micro data methods and practice," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 1(2), pages 141-162, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:hal:pseose:hal-00975554 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Koenig, Pamina & Mayneris, Florian & Poncet, Sandra, 2010. "Local export spillovers in France," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 622-641, May.
    3. Lucas Figal Garone & Alessandro Maffioli & Joao Negri & Cesar Rodriguez & Gonzalo Vázquez-Baré, 2015. "Cluster development policy, SME’s performance, and spillovers: evidence from Brazil," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(4), pages 925-948, April.
    4. Martin, Philippe & Mayer, Thierry & Mayneris, Florian, 2011. "Spatial concentration and plant-level productivity in France," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 182-195, March.
    5. Syed Hasan & Alessandra Faggian & H. Allen Klaiber & Ian Sheldon, 2018. "Agglomeration Economies or Selection? An Analysis of Taiwanese Science Parks," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 41(3), pages 335-363, May.
    6. Békés, Gábor & Harasztosi, Péter, 2013. "Agglomeration premium and trading activity of firms," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 51-64.
    7. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10145 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/10145 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10145 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Keller, Wolfgang, 2010. "International Trade, Foreign Direct Investment, and Technology Spillovers," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 793-829, Elsevier.
    11. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/10145 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Florian Mayneris, 2008. "Spatial Concentration and Firm-Level Productivity in France," Working Papers hal-01066174, HAL.
    13. Gilles Duranton, 2011. "California Dreamin': The Feeble Case for Cluster Policies," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 3(1), pages 3-45, July.
    14. Richard Baldwin & Frédéric Robert-Nicoud, 2015. "A simple model of the juggernaut effect of trade liberalisation," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 143, pages 70-79.
    15. Wagner, Rodrigo & Zahler, Andrés, 2015. "New exports from emerging markets: Do followers benefit from pioneers?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 203-223.
    16. Wang, Xu & Zhang, Xiaobo & Xie, Zhuan & Huang, Yiping, 2016. "Roads to innovation: Firm-level evidence from China:," IFPRI discussion papers 1542, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    17. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Florian Mayneris, 2008. "Spatial Concentration and Firm-Level Productivity in France," Sciences Po publications 6858, Sciences Po.
    18. Martin, Philippe & Mayer, Thierry & Mayneris, Florian, 2011. "Public support to clusters: A firm level study of French "Local Productive Systems"," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 108-123, March.
    19. Bahar, Dany & Rosenow, Samuel & Stein, Ernesto & Wagner, Rodrigo, 2019. "Export take-offs and acceleration: Unpacking cross-sector linkages in the evolution of comparative advantage," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 48-60.
    20. Kyoji Fukao & Victoria Kravtsova & Kentaro Nakajima, 2014. "How important is geographical agglomeration to factory efficiency in Japan’s manufacturing sector?," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 52(3), pages 659-696, May.
    21. Merlevede, Bruno & Schoors, Koen & Spatareanu, Mariana, 2014. "FDI Spillovers and Time since Foreign Entry," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 108-126.
    22. Alessandro Borin & Michele Mancini, 2016. "Foreign direct investment and firm performance: an empirical analysis of Italian firms," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(4), pages 705-732, November.
    23. Stephen J. Redding, 2010. "The Empirics Of New Economic Geography," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 297-311, February.
    24. Wolfgang Keller, 2002. "Geographic Localization of International Technology Diffusion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 120-142, March.
    25. Andrey Stoyanov & Nikolay Zubanov, 2012. "Productivity Spillovers across Firms through Worker Mobility," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 168-198, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Competitiveness; Clusters; International Trade; Firm selection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cii:cepidt:2010-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepiifr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.