IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esr/wpaper/dynreg31.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inventors and the Geographical Breadth of Knowledge Spillovers

Author

Listed:
  • Giuri, Paola
  • Mariani, Myriam

Abstract

This paper studies the geographical breadth of knowledge spillovers. Previous research suggests that knowledge spillovers benefit from geographical proximity in technologically active and rich regions more than elsewhere. An alternative view explains the geographical breadth of knowledge spillovers as a function of the characteristics and personal networks of the individuals. We test these two competing theories by using information provided directly by the inventors of 6,750 European patents (PatVal-EU survey). Our results confirm the importance of inventors' personal background. However, compared to previous research, we find that the level of education of the inventors is key in shaping the geographical breadth of knowledge spillovers. Highly educated inventors rely more on geographically wide research networks than their less educated peers. This holds after controlling for the mobility of the inventors and for the scientific nature of the research performed. Differently, location matters only in the very rare regions in Europe that perform the bulk of the research in the specific discipline of the inventors.

Suggested Citation

  • Giuri, Paola & Mariani, Myriam, 2008. "Inventors and the Geographical Breadth of Knowledge Spillovers," Papers DYNREG31, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:esr:wpaper:dynreg31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anders Brostrom & Maureen McKelvey & Christian Sandstrom, 2009. "Investing in Localized Relationships with Universities: What are the Benefits for R&D Subsidiaries of Multinational Enterprises?," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 59-78.
    2. Broström, Anders, 2010. "Working with distant researchers--Distance and content in university-industry interaction," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 1311-1320, December.
    3. Pavla Žížalová, 2009. "Geography of Knowledge-based Collaboration in a Post-communist Country: Specific Experience or Generalized Pattern?," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(5), pages 791-814, February.
    4. Katharina Frosch, 2009. "Do only new brooms sweep clean? A review on workforce age and innovation," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-005, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    5. Olivier Bouba-Olga & Marie Ferru, 2012. "Does Geographical Proximity Still Matter?," Working Papers hal-00725073, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education/geography/inventors/knowledge spillovers/patents;

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • R19 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:esr:wpaper:dynreg31. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Burns (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esriiie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.