How is the R&D-productivity link affected by the environment where firms locate? Are companies located with their registered offices in more R&D favorable environments better able to translate their R&D knowledge into productivity gains? Our paper tries to answer these questions analyzing - in the European context - if R&D performing companies cluster themselves in “higher-order R&D regions”, as the Economic Geography theories postulate, inducing a polarisation in terms of labour productivity in comparison with firms located in “lower-order R&D regions”. The proposed microeconometric estimates are based on a unique longitudinal database of publicly-traded companies belonging to manufacturing and service sectors. The final unbalanced sample comprises 626 European companies for a total of 3,431observations, covering the period 1990-2008. Results show that European “higher-order R&D regions” not only invest more in R&D, but also achieve more in terms of productivity gains from their own research activities. Results also show that in the case of “lower-order R&D regions”, physical capital stock is still playing a dominant role.
Cozza, C., Ortega Argiles, R., Piva, M., Baptista, R., Productivity Gaps Among European Regions, Technology Transfer in a Global Economy, Springer, Heidelberg 2012: 205-232. 10.1007/978-1-4614-6102-9_12 [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/42675]
Productivity Gaps Among European Regions
Ortega Argiles, Raquel;Piva, Mariacristina;
2012
Abstract
How is the R&D-productivity link affected by the environment where firms locate? Are companies located with their registered offices in more R&D favorable environments better able to translate their R&D knowledge into productivity gains? Our paper tries to answer these questions analyzing - in the European context - if R&D performing companies cluster themselves in “higher-order R&D regions”, as the Economic Geography theories postulate, inducing a polarisation in terms of labour productivity in comparison with firms located in “lower-order R&D regions”. The proposed microeconometric estimates are based on a unique longitudinal database of publicly-traded companies belonging to manufacturing and service sectors. The final unbalanced sample comprises 626 European companies for a total of 3,431observations, covering the period 1990-2008. Results show that European “higher-order R&D regions” not only invest more in R&D, but also achieve more in terms of productivity gains from their own research activities. Results also show that in the case of “lower-order R&D regions”, physical capital stock is still playing a dominant role.
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