Does Higher Education Institutions Technology Transfer Play a Role in the Localization of High-Technology Firms? Determinants and Transmission Channels in Italy

The literature on knowledge spillovers explains how regional firm location is positively affected by the two main knowledge outputs of higher education institutions: new knowledge and specialized human capital. Following these premises, this paper aims to (i) detect spatial dependence in the distribution of certain firms that are potentially more exposed to (and interested in) receiving spillovers from universities; and (ii) investigate in exploratory fashion the effects of these spatial spillovers in terms of higher education institutions’ third mission activities. The analysis will take place for the Italian case on a fine spatial scale and will use micro data on active firms and universities’ geographical locations. The applied methods refer to global and local analysis of spatial autocorrelation and to regression models. In the first part of the analysis we will compute local quotients for the group of firms that are considered to be most highly exposed to spillovers received from universities. We will be able to verify whether clusters are spatially closer to the location of the universities and whether their distributions are spatially contiguous. In the second part of the study, we will look at what happens within clusters by means of the Italian evaluation of research quality data related to university spin-offs, patents, and third-party contract activities. The use of these data will allow us on the one hand to qualify clusters in relation to how closely they are linked to universities and, on the other, to carry out regression models capable of signalling to us the main transmission channels, if any, through which higher education institutions’ promote innovation, entrepreneurship and thus technology transfer.