Recent

An insight report into the UK's graduate entrepreneurs

Insight report, 2022

(with Rodriguez )

This short insight paper provides a snapshot of the UK’s graduate entrepreneurs based on insights from the Graduate Outcomes Survey. Graduate entrepreneurs are defined as those that, within 15 months of graduating, either started their own businesses, considered themselves self-employed (freelancers), or are at the conceptual stage (i.e., developing a creative, artistic or professional portfolio). It shows that graduate entrepreneurs in the UK come from different backgrounds and locations. They tend to undertake entrepreneurship activities in the places they have an existing connection to. In other words, the majority of UK graduate entrepreneurs are local entrepreneurs (i.e., they were born and studied locally).


Mapping and examining the determinants of England's rural creative microclusters

Research papers, 2022

(with Siepel, Hill, Rowe )

This research uses pre-pandemic web scraped data of 184,791 creative industries organisations in England to identify rural creative microclusters of geographically proximate creative firms. Our cluster mapping demonstrates that rural microclusters are widely spread across the country, with about one-third of the rural firms and organisations in our sample are operating in one of the small clusters. Our results for rural clusters are also largely in line with previous findings, which have mainly focused on urban settings and the importance of place-based assets (such as cultural institutions and social capital), location and diverse economies. We find that the drivers of clustering in rural areas are not inherently different from urban areas, apart from a weak link between rural microclustering and informal social networks.


Creative Radar 2021: The impact of COVID-19 on the UK’s creative industries

Policy Report- PEC

(with Siepel, Camerani,, Masucci, Casadei and Bloom. )

This is the second report from the Creative Radar series, by PEC researchers at the University of Sussex, and funded by the AHRC. The authors analysed data from a survey of creative businesses initially carried out just before the COVID-19 pandemic, and then again a year later. This is the second report from the Creative Radar series, by PEC researchers at the University of Sussex, and funded by the AHRC. The authors analysed data from a survey of creative businesses initially carried out just before the COVID-19 pandemic, and then again a year later.


Creative Industries Radar: Mapping the UK’s creative clusters and microclusters

Policy Report- PEC

(with Siepel, Camerani,, Masucci, Casadei and Bloom. )

This report introduces a new experimental approach to understanding the clustering of UK creative industries businesses. By using web scraped data of 200,000 creative industries businesses and organisations, we identify creative ‘microclusters’ at the street, neighbourhood, and town level. We then explore the UK’s creative clusters and microclusters in greater detail through a representative survey of 976 creative industries businesses.


Innovation Subsidies and Business Cycle

Published in Industry and Innovation

(with Isabel Busom)

This paper investigates the impact of public support to business investment R&D over the different phases of the business cycle. It uses firm-level data for Spain during the period 2005 to 2014, thus covering an expansion, a recession and a recovery. Propensity score matching and differences in differences methods are combined to estimate the response of supported firms in each phase. Findings show that the profile of beneficiaries of public support did not change significantly over the cycle. Estimated effects depend on the stage of the cycle, the duration of support and the type of outcome indicator. The impact on total investment is positive during expansion years and null during the crisis years; when looking at firms’ allocation of human resources to R&D, the multiplier effect is higher during the crisis years; finally effects last longer for longer spells. Direct support allowed participating firms to allocate more of their employees’ time to R&D activities during the recession. This suggests that under some conditions the multiplier of public support to innovation may be higher during recessions.


Innovation, public support and Productivity in Colombia: A cross-industry comparison.

Published in World Development 2017

(with Isabel Busom)

We contribute new evidence on the relationship between public support, innovation and productivity at the firm level by investigating several under-explored issues. Using firm-level data for Colombian Companies, we try to identify and compare the profile of firms that have access to public support for innovation in manufacturing and service industries separately. In the second block of research, we examine whether the association between the introduction of innovations and productivity varies across the productivity distribution; third, we distinguish between technological and non-technological innovation, since the latter may be especially relevant in the service industries relative to manufacturing.


Duration dependence in R&D subsidization and Firm’s innovative behavior

We investigate the determinants of R&D subsidization persistence and its impact on innovation results. The empirical analysis comprises three reduced-form equations which involve estimating survival rates of R&D subsidies and analyzing their effect on firms’ innovation results including the decision to stop innovation projects. First, we find that firms’ continuous engagement into R&D subsidies is a self-sustained process which is in part fueled by the accumulation of experience in getting funding even once unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for. Second, R&D subsidy persistence is positively correlated with innovation outcomes, including a lower probability of abandoning innovation projects. Results confirm some heterogeneity between SMEs and large firms. In particular, R&D subsidy persistence is associated with New-to-market innovation for SMEs but not for large firms. From the policy perspective, encouraging continuous use of R&D subsidies in SMEs seems to be particularly more appropriate in fostering innovation results which are far from the market (i.e., more radical innovation) and whose degree of market failure may be higher.


PhD

Three empirical essays on R&D subsidization and firm innovation

Supervised by Dr. Isabel Busom (UAB)

Overview in a video

Past

Innovació, suport públic i productivitat a Catalunya: el cas dels serveis i les manufactures

(With Karol Rodriguez) (In Catalan)

Càtedra Innovaciò-I-Empresa. Universitat Rovira-i-Virgili, 2016.


Inversión privada en I+D, apoyo público e innovación en los años de crisis.

(With Isabel Busom) (In Spanish)

Estudios econométricos PITEC 2016.


The Techno-Institutional Leap and the Formation of New Firms

(with Martha Garcia & Patricia Vargas)

Information Policy, 2013.


ICTs and the informal economy: Mobile and broadband roles.

(With García-Murillo, & Vargas-Leon, P.)

Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance, 2017.



© 2022. Jorge Velez .