Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence

Economics with policy - international seminar

09/06/2018

Forthcoming lecture

6 September 2018

Tom Broekel

Measuring technology complexity - a network approach

Department of Spatial Planning and Human Geography, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany

Extended abstract

The complexity of technologies is seen as crucial explanatory dimension of technological development and economic success (Romer, 1990; Dalmazzo, 2002). Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009) argue that country’s economic development is shaped by its ability to successfully engage in complex economic activities and technologies. Both Sorenson (2005) and Balland and Rigby (2017) show that few cities are capable of mastering complex technologies that lay the foundation for their future growth.

Despite its theoretical relevance and an increasing empirical interest, measuring the complexity of technologies empirically is a complicated issue, as Pintea and Thompson (2007) note: “We do not have any easy way to measure complexity” [p. 280]. The two most prominent approaches are put forward by Fleming and Sorenson (2001) and Balland and Rigby (2017), with the latter transferring the approach of Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009) for approximating economic complexity to the measurement of technological complexity. Both approaches essentially build on the assumption of complexity being scarce. Balland and Rigby (2017) assume technological complexity to be spatially scare, while Fleming and Sorenson (2001) build on the idea of complex knowledge combinations appearing less frequently than simple ones. However, these assumptions are theoretically problematic and induce significant limitations when applying the measures in practice.

The presentation introduces an alternative measure of technological complexity, structural complexity, which avoids these assumptions by applying a network perspective. More precise, the measure of structural complexity quantifies the diversity of technological elements’ embeddedness into the combinatorial knowledge network (aka knowledge space).

In addition to discussing the methodological basis of the measure, the presentation will empirically benchmark the new and the traditional approaches of measuring technological complexity against four stylized facts. The empirical assessment uses patent data for Europe between 1980 to 2015.

References:

Fleming, L. & O. Sorenson (2001). Technology as a complex adaptive system: Evidence from patent data. Research Policy, 30, 1019-1039.

Hidalgo, C. & R. Hausman (2009): The building blocks of economic complexity. PNAS 106(26), 10570-10575.

Helyszín: MTA Research House, conference room nr. K11-12, ground floor, 4 Tóth Kálmán street, 1097 Budapest

IE CERS HAS Transition in Agriculture – Agricultural Economics in Transition XV.

09/10/2018 - 09/11/2018

 

 

 

Program

 

Monday, 10 September, 2018

 

9:00 Imre Fertő (CERS IE-HAS/KU/CUB): Introduction

 

Rural development and Agricultural trade

 

9:10 Bakucs Zoltán (CERS IE-HAS): Measuring regional development using only internal migration data
9:50 Ants-HannesViira (Estonian University of Life Sciences): Maintenance of permanent grasslands – environmental measure, sofa farming or constraint for the structural development?

 

10:30 Coffee break

 

10:50 Pawel Chmielinski (Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics – National Research Institute): Towards more sustainable rural systems in Poland
11:30 Imre Fertő (CERS IE-HAS): Duration of European agri-food trade

 

12:10 13:10 Lunch break

 

Efficiency

 

13:10 Baráth Lajos (CERS IE-HAS):Accounting for TFP Growth in Global Agriculture – a Common Factor Approach
13:50 Štefan Bojnec (University of Primorska): Soft budget constraints in dairy farms: comparative analysis of Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia

 

14:30 Coffee break

 

Policy

 

14:50 Jan Pokrivcak (Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra): The Political Economy of Capping of Direct Payments in Slovakia
15:30 Jüri Lillemets (Estonian University of Life Sciences): Spatial and structural symmetry of CAP payments

 

19:00 Conference dinner

 

Tuesday, 11 September, 2018

 

Policy

 

9:00 Alessandro Olper (University of Milan): Climate change and migration: Is agriculture the main channel?
9:40 Jan Fałkowski (University of Warsaw): Local electoral processes & agricultural taxes: some evidence from Poland

 

10:20 Coffee break

 

Food chain

 

10:40 Adrienn Molnár (CERS IE-HAS/ Ghent University, Division of Agri-Food Marketing and Chain Management): Development of a somatic coaching intervention for SMEs’ for improving their performance and relationships using an education design research approach
11:20 Gusztáv Nemes (CERS IE-HAS): Myths and Realities of Local Food Systems

 

12:00-13:00 Lunch break

 

13:00 Martin Collison (Collison&Associates): Technology disruption of the food economy and the opportunities for SMEs
13:40 Szabó G. Gábor (CERS IE-HAS): An attempt to identify influencing factors of producers’ cooperation activity – results of a survey in the Hungarian agriculture
14:20 Joshua Wesana (Ghent University, Division of Agri-Food Marketing and Chain Management): labelling nutrition sensitive food chains: a consumer preference analysis of milk products

 

15:00 Imre Fertő (CERS IE-HAS/KE/CUB): Conference closure

 

19:00 Party

Helyszín: MTA HTK 1097 Budapest Tóth Kálmán u. 4. fszt. K.0.11-12.

Workshop on ″Regional Governance and Sustainable Development in Hungary and China″

09/25/2018

  Workshop on "Regional Governance and Sustainable Development in Hungary and China" 

held by the Institute of Spatial Planning and Regional Economy,
National Development and Reform Commission / ISPRE, NDRC
and the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies  - Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Helyszín: MTA HTK 1097 Budapest, Tóth Kálmán u. 4. Ground Floor room K 0.13-K0.14