The impact of policy consistency on technological competitiveness: A study on OECD countries

This study investigates the impact of policy consistency on technological competitiveness using patent citation analysis. Policy support plays a key role in promoting firms’ investment in research and development (R&D) activities, especially in emerging sectors. Policy consistency increases technological competitiveness, since it encourages firms to invest in R&D activities. Although previous studies argue policy design and characteristics, few deal with policy consistency, and they lack a quantitative measure of policy consistency and explanation of its effects. Therefore, this study proposes the quantitative indexes for policy consistency and potential technological competitiveness. The indexes are applied to the case of renewable energy sector since energy sector is highly dependent on the government policy and thus needs high policy consistency. The result shows that renewable energy technology development is affected by policy and the higher the policy consistency especially in emerging sectors. It also shows that countries of high policy consistency tend to achieve higher technological competitiveness and thus are likely to secure higher technological competitiveness in the future. The findings of this study can be used in designing policy for sustainable technological competitiveness and will be a corner stone for researches on assessing policy consistency. •A novel approach is proposed for quantitative evaluation of policy consistency.•Indexes for policy consistency and potential technological competitiveness are proposed.•Countries of high consistency had incremental growth of technological competitiveness.•Consistent national R&D policy helps to achieve high competitiveness in emerging sectors.