Technology and the dynamics of industrial structures: an empirical mapping of Dutch manufacturing

This paper explores the empirical link between, on the one hand, innovation and, on the other hand, industrial structure and dynamics in The Netherlands. We use the concept of ‘technological regimes’ as the guiding framework to interpret this relationship. The data are drawn from the Production Statistics and the Business Register of manufacturing firms in The Netherlands and the second Community Innovation Survey. A classification of technological regimes that refines Pavitt's taxonomy is applied to the data. Our analysis is aimed at identifying the variables that are best able to discriminate between technological regimes for our Dutch case. We find that a mix of innovation related and market structure related variables account for most variability and broad differences across regimes; dynamic market structure variables account for an additional share of variability and finer differences across regimes. Overall, we conclude that the concept of technological regimes provides a useful framework that helps to shed further light on the relationship between innovation and market structure.