Collaboration in pharmaceutical research: Exploration of country-level determinants

In this paper we focus on proximity as one of the main determinants of international collaboration in pharmaceutical research. We use various count data specifications of the gravity model to estimate the intensity of collaboration between pairs of countries as explained by the geographical, cognitive, institutional, social, and cultural dimensions of proximity. Our results suggest that geographical distance has a significant negative relation to the collaboration intensity between countries. The amount of previous collaborations, as a proxy for social proximity, is positively related to the number of cross-country collaborations. We do not find robust significant associations between cognitive proximity or institutional proximity with the intensity of international research collaboration. Moreover, there is no robust and significant relation between the interaction terms of geographical distance with social, cognitive, or institutional proximity, and international research collaboration. Our findings for cultural proximity do not allow of unambiguous conclusions concerning their influence on the collaboration intensity between countries. Linguistic ties among countries are associated with a higher amount of cross-country research collaboration but we find no clear association for historical and colonial linkages.