Digital technologies, technological improvement rates, and innovations “Made in Switzerland”

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

Table 12 The digital domain and technological improvement rates: time period estimates across industries

Dependent variable	Technology improvement rate k
Model	1990–2015	1990–1999	2000–2009	2010–2015
Variables
Digital:Chemical	9.910***	10.786***	11.554***	12.434***
Digital:Chemical	(0.561)	(0.721)	(0.400)	(0.574)
Digital:Computer/ICT	56.664***	42.961***	63.412***	60.083***
Digital:Computer/ICT	(2.077)	(4.720)	(0.446)	(1.221)
Digital:Electrical	12.368***	9.883***	14.058***	13.984***
Digital:Electrical	(0.534)	(0.670)	(0.351)	(0.246)
Digital:Machinery	26.689***	23.335***	29.885***	28.240***
Digital:Machinery	(0.828)	(0.925)	(0.219)	(0.424)
Digital:Medical	5.219***	1.899***	7.777***	8.795***
Digital:Medical	(0.800)	(0.375)	(0.295)	(1.053)
Digital:Pharma	4.216***	3.582***	4.677***	5.607***
Digital:Pharma	(0.183)	(0.123)	(0.162)	(0.553)
Fixed effects
Industry	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)
Year	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)
Year-Industry	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)	\(\checkmark\)
Observations	3,243,802	1,207,095	1,651,118	385,589

All estimations include USPTO patents of the indicated filing years if at least one inventor has been from Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, the UK, or the USA. In order to show associations in percentage points, we have multiplied the FWD90-dummy by 100. The industry fixed effects are at the level of the six industries included in the interaction terms. The standard errors in parentheses are also clustered at this industry level. Significance levels for the coefficients are indicated as: \(p^*<0.1\); \(p^{**}<0.05\); \(p^{***}<0.01\)