Globalization and Directed Technological Change at the Firm Level: The European Evidence

Purpose – This chapter aims at exploring the effects of globalization on technological change by focusing on the determinants of the direction of technological change at the firm level of analysis by following the induced technological change approach implemented by the localized technological change hypothesis.Methodology/approach – In the empirical analysis, we proxy the direction of technological change by means of the changes in the output elasticity of capital and analyze how it is affected by the changes in factor market costs and firms' attributes for a panel of 1,113 companies listed on UK and the main continental Europe financial markets for the period 1995–2003.Findings – We find that small firms are more likely to introduce capital-intensive technological changes while large firms will introduce skill-intensive technological changes.Research limitations/implications – Our model provides a clear analytical framework that interprets the growing skill intensity of the advanced economies as the result of the introduction of new technologies induced by the growing globalization and biased by the characteristics and the types of innovation strategies of the firms.Originality/value of paper – In so doing, the chapter adds to the existing literature in that it first explores the effects of globalization upon factor markets and, second, it investigates the effects of the direction of technological change within a microeconomic perspective.