Sjoerd Beugelsdijk, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
THE REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT AND A FIRM’S INNOVATIVE PERFORMANCE (assigned to theme
Following the recent critical debate in regional science and economic geography I argue that in order to truly test the importance of the role of the region for a firm’s innovative performance we need to minimize firm specific heterogeneity. Controlling for a large number of firm specific factors I test in this paper if regional characteristics like regional R&D intensity, number of R&D workers in the region, and presence of a research institute are significantly related to a firm’s ability to produce innovations. The insignificant findings suggest that the firm specific drivers of innovation are more important than a firm’s regional environment. Based on this result, I argue that we need to analyze interactions and relationships, particularly those involving the exchange of knowledge to assess the extent to which such interactions are carried out within bounded territories.
submitted 2005-04-29 09:18:56.107
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(copyright Gunther Maier) |