Technological status of the Italian companies

This paper aims at investigating the role of different cooperation channels in enhancing the technological status of the Italian companies, as defined by Von Tunzelmann and Wang (2003). Different types of cooperation are examined along three lines: with customers and suppliers (i.e. vertical cooperation), with other firms, competitors and consultants (i.e. horizontal cooperation), and finally with universities and public research institutions (i.e. institutional cooperation). From a methodological point of view the technological status of a firm is modelled as a categorical ordered dependent variable of a generalized ordered logit model where cooperation partnerships and firm’s characteristics play the role of independent variables. The findings, based on firm-level data provided by the Italian Community Innovation Survey (CIS 2008), show that cooperation channels as well as some company characteristics, such as size, human capital and internationalization, significantly impact on the technological status of Italian firms, despite important regional differences