Professor Mehmet Ugur BSc, MSc, PhD

Professor Ugur investigates the interactions between governance, institutions and performance in various contexts, including innovation, technology diffusion, economic growth, income distribution, European Union policy making, and European network industries. In his work on institutional quality, Professor Ugur demonstrates that good governance institutions are conducive to better economic, political and corporate outcomes as a result reduced transaction costs and/or reduced scope for rent extraction by veto points.

In a review of one of his edited books (Does Economic Governance Matter? ), Professor Avinash Dixit of Princeton University has commented as follows: 'The editors give a thoughtful review of ideas and landmarks in the literature and an organizing framework … The whole will significantly advance our understanding of institutions and economic performance.'

Key funded projects

Evaluation of Research and Development (R&D) Expenditures, Firm Survival, Firm Growth and Employment: UK Evidence in the OECD Context  (ESRC grant reference: ES/K004824/1)

This project has addressed four research questions on the incentives for and economic consequences of R&D investment:

• Does public support for R&D investment encourage firms to increase the level of privately funded R&D effort?
• Does R&D intensity increase firm survival rates?
• What are the effects of R&D intensity on employment creation?
• What are the effects of knowledge (R&D) capital on firm productivity?

Innovative modelling and adherence to best practice in micro-econometric research has enabled us uncover a high degree of heterogeneity in the effect of public subsidies on business R&D and in the effects of the latter on firm performance in terms of survival, employment creation, and productivity growth. Particularly:

• Public subsidies are conducive to additionality effects among small and young firms that account for about 10% of the subsidy allocations; but no additionality effects are observed among large and old firms that account for about 90% of the subsidy allocations.
• The effect of R&D on firm survival follows an inverted-U pattern, indicating that the survival enhancing effect of R&D declines as R&D investment becomes riskier at higher levels of R&D intensity.
• R&D intensity has a positive but decelerating effect on full-time jobs for R&D personnel (scientists and technicians); but the effect on non-R&D jobs is negative even though the adverse effect is decelerating.
• The effect of knowledge (R&D) capital on productivity is relatively larger among firms in industries with higher concentration levels or among firms with some market power as a result of being science-based, specialised suppliers of technology or scale-intensive firms that increase the cost of new entry.

Effects of Innovation on Employment: Evidence Synthesis

This project was partly funded by the Department for International Development (DFID). The aim of the project was to provide a synthesis of the empirical and qualitative evidence on the relationship between types of innovation (process and product innovation) and levels of employment, paying attention to skill levels, gender, and the level of aggregation/analysis at enterprise, industry and macro levels.

Both narrative synthesis and meta-analysis findings indicate that: (i) the effect of process innovation on skilled labour employment is positive but small; (ii) the effect of process and product innovation on total (skilled and unskilled labour) employment is positive but too small to be practically significant; and (iii) the effect of process and product innovation on sector-level employment as opposed to enterprise-level employment is negative but too small to be practically significant. These findings indicate innovation in low-income countries tends to be skills-biased and employment creation by innovators may be offset by job losses in non-innovative enterprises.

Effects of Corruption on Economic Growth: Evidence Synthesis

This project was also partly funded by the Department for International Development (DFID). Its objective was to evaluate the impact of corruption on economic growth theoretically and empirically with a view to: (a) providing a narrative synthesis of the types of corruption and the causal links between corruption and growth; (b) providing a meta-synthesis of the empirical evidence on the direct and indirect effects of corruption on growth; and (c) mapping the narrative synthesis with the meta-analysis with a view to deriving policy conclusions and point out potential avenues for further research.

The review reports that corruption does have a negative and genuine effect on growth. This aggregate result is obtained after controlling for growth measures, corruption data sources and country types. Indirect effects of corruption on growth tend to be larger than direct effects. In addition, corruption is associated with a negative effect on growth in both low-income countries and middle- or high-income countries.

The review also reports that there is a prima facie case for policy interventions aimed at reducing the incidence of corruption in both low-income and mixed countries. However, economic gains from reducing corruption in low-income countries can be increased if anti-corruption interventions are combined with a wider set of policies aimed at improving institutional quality and providing correct incentives for investment in human capital. This systematic review also indicates that levels of corruption in low-income countries may be higher than non-low-income countries, but the latter stand to gain more from reducing the incidence of corruption.

Innovation, Firm Dynamics and Productivity: Special issue of the Economics of Innovation and New Technology

This project builds on a workshop held at the University of Greenwich in June 2019. Organised by Professor Ugur and Professor Marco Vivarelli (Director of the Department of Economic Policy, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano), the conference brought together several papers that have reported novel findings on the sources of hetehrogeneity and non-linearities in the effects of  innovation investments on firm performance in terms of survival, employment growth  and productivity. These papers have been brought together as a special issue of the Journal. The project aims to contribute to the debate along three paths. First, establishes the need to for theoretical perspectives and empirical modeling that allow for heterogeneity in the effects of R&D/innovation on firm performance. Secondly, it draws attention to recent modelling and estimation effort that reveals novel sources of heterogeneity, non-linearity and volatility in the gains from R&D/innovation, particularly in terms of its effects on firm survival and productivity. Thirdly, it links the emergent findings with those from prior reviews to demonstrate how the state of the art is evolving and with what implications for future research.

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