The Innovation Linkages in Europe

In this article we investigate the determinants of the Innovation Linkages in Europe. We use data from the European Innovation Scoreboard of the European Commission in the period 2000-2019 for 36 countries. Data are analyzed using Panel Data with Fixed Effects, Random Effects, Dynamic Panel at 1 Stage, Dynamic Panel at 2 Stage, Pooled OLS, WLS. Results show that the Innovation Linkages in Europe is positively associated with “Buyer Sophistication”, “Government Procurement of Advanced Technology Products”, “Finance and Support”, “Firm Investments”, “Human Resources”, and negatively associated with “Population Density”, “Employment Share Services”

The transformative effects of tacit technological knowledge

Tacit knowledge – ideas that cannot readily be meaningfully and completely communicated – has long been considered a precursor to scientific and technological advances. Using words and phrases found in the universe of USPTO patents 1940-2020, we propose a new method of measuring tacit knowledge and its progressive codification. We uncover a discontinuity in the production of highly tacit technologies. Before 1980, highly- and less-tacit inventions are evenly distributed among inventors, organizations, scientific domains and subnational regions. After 1980, inventors of highly tacit patents become relatively rare, and increasingly concentrated in domains and locations. The economic payoffs to tacit knowledge also change, as it starts unequally rewarding high-income workers. This suggests a role for tacit knowledge in contributing to the rise in income inequality since 1980

The role of geography in the complex diffusion of innovations

The urban-rural divide is increasing in modern societies calling for geographical extensions of social influence modelling. Improved understanding of innovation diffusion across locations and through social connections can provide us with new insights into the spread of information, technological progress and economic development. In this work, we analyze the spatial adoption dynamics of iWiW, an Online Social Network (OSN) in Hungary and uncover empirical features about the spatial adoption in social networks. During its entire life cycle from 2002 to 2012, iWiW reached up to 300 million friendship ties of 3 million users. We find that the number of adopters as a function of town population follows a scaling law that reveals a strongly concentrated early adoption in large towns and a less concentrated late adoption. We also discover a strengthening distance decay of spread over the life-cycle indicating high fraction of distant diffusion in early stages but the dominance of local diffusion in late stages. The spreading process is modelled within the Bass diffusion framework that enables us to compare the differential equation version with an agent-based version of the model run on the empirical network. Although both models can capture the macro trend of adoption, they have limited capacity to describe the observed trends of urban scaling and distance decay. We find, however that incorporating adoption thresholds, defined by the fraction of social connections that adopt a technology before the individual adopts, improves the network model fit to the urban scaling of early adopters. Controlling for the threshold distribution enables us to eliminate the bias induced by local network structure on predicting local adoption peaks. Finally, we show that geographical features such as distance from the innovation origin and town size influence prediction of adoption peak at local scales.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, 4 table

Interconnectedness in Education Systems

Candia, C., Pulgar, J., & Pinheiro, F. L. (2022). Interconnectedness in Education Systems. Manuscript submitted for publication. arXiv: Physics: Physics Education. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2203.05624Traditional methods used in education sciences often disregard the underlying complexity of the educational system and consequently its emergence phenomena. Underlying complex systems, there is a rich web of interconnected components that determine the relational properties of the system. Here, we argue that an interconnected vision of educational systems -- from classrooms to an organizational level -- is key to improving learning, social integration, well-being, and decision making, all fundamental aspects of the educational experience. Hence, understanding the education system as an interconnected network of people, degree programs, and/or institutions requires methods and concepts from computational social sciences. Thus, we can leverage institutional records and experimental designs to elicit the relational maps of key players in education and derive their implications in their functioning at all scales. Here, in different settings, from elementary classrooms to higher education programs, we show how mapping the network relationships between entities can lead to the inference of novel insights about education systems and the development of solutions with societal implications.preprintsubmitte

Assessing press releases as a data source for spatial research

Describing the distribution and development of socio-economic activities in space is frequently limited due to data availability, as official statistical data sources are often restricted to specific topics and geographical scales. Consequently, new and alternative data sources are needed as complements. This paper presents, discusses, and empirically explores an example of such an alternative data source that promises to give detailed and novel insights into regions' socio-economic structures: press releases. While press releases have seen some use in the literature, they have hardly seen any applications in regional research. Consequently, it is still largely unknown to what extent their information content gives systematic insights into regional socio-economic patterns. The paper closes this gap by assessing the degree to which the content of press releases corresponds to the socio-economic characteristics of regions, by means of an empirical analysis of German NUTS-3 regions. The results confirm that press release content varies systematically between regions, and regional differences in socioeconomic characteristics, events, and activities seem to be well-presented by press releases. This suggests that press releases offer substantial potential and might be a useful complementary data source in regional studies

Origin of power laws and their spatial fractal structure for city-size distributions

City-size distributions follow an approximate power law in various countries despite high volatility in relative city sizes over time. Our empirical evidence for the United States indicates that the scaling law stems from a spatial fractal structure owing to the coordination of industrial locations. While the locations of individual industries change considerably over time, there is a persistent pattern in that the localized industries at a given time are found only in larger cities. The spatial organization of cities exhibits a stable hierarchical structure in which larger cities are spaced apart to serve as centers for surrounding smaller cities, generating a recursive pattern across different spatial scales. In our theoretical replication of the observed regularities, diversity in scale economy among industries induces diversity in their location pattern, which translates into diversity in city size via spatial coordination of industries and population. The city-size power law is a generic feature of Monte-Carlo samples of stationary states resulting from the spontaneous spatial fractal structure in the hypothetical economy. The identified regularities reveal constraints on feasible urban planning at each regional scale. The success or failure of place-based policies designed to take advantage of individual cities' characteristics should depend on their spatial relationships with other cities, subject to the nationwide spatial fractal structure

Urban Form and Structure Explain Variability in Spatial Inequality of Property Flood Risk among US Counties

Understanding the relationship between urban form and structure and spatial variation of property flood risk has been a longstanding challenge in urban planning and city flood risk management. Yet limited data-driven insights exist regarding the extent to which variation in spatial inequality of property flood risk in cities can be explained by heterogenous features of urban form and structure. In this study, we explore eight key features (i.e., population density, point of interest density, road density, minority segregation, income segregation, urban centrality index, gross domestic product, and human mobility index) related to urban form and structure to explain variability in spatial inequality of property flood risk among 2567 US counties. Using rich datasets related to property flood risk, we quantify spatial inequality in property flood risk and delineate features of urban form and structure using high-resolution human mobility and facility distribution data. We identify significant variation in spatial inequality of property flood risk among US counties with coastline and metropolitan counties having the greatest spatial inequality of property flood risk. The results also reveal variations in spatial inequality of property flood risk can be effectively explained based on principal components of development density, economic activity, and centrality and segregation. Using a classification and regression tree model, we demonstrate how these principal components interact and form pathways that explain levels of spatial inequality in property flood risk in US counties. The findings offer important insights for the understanding of the complex interplay between urban form and structure and spatial inequality of property flood risk and have important implications for integrated urban design strategies to address property flood risk as cities continue to expand and develop

relatedness, complexity and regional inequality in Europe

Pinheiro, F. L., Balland, P-A., Boschma, R., & Hartmann, D. (2022). The dark side of the geography of innovation: relatedness, complexity and regional inequality in Europe. Regional Studies, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2022.2106362------------------------Funding: Flavio L. Pinheiro acknowledges the financial support provided by FCT Portugal under the project UIDB/0415s2/2020 – Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC). Dominik Hartmann would like to express his gratitude for the financial support of CNPq [grant numbers 406943/2021-4 and 315441/2021-6]. Ron Boschma acknowledges the support from the European Union-funded PILLARS (Pathways to IncLusive LAbouR marketS) project [grant agreement number 101004703]. Pierre-Alexandre Balland acknowledges the financial support from the MSCA-RISE TREND (Transition with Resilience for Evolutionary Development) project [grant agreement number 823952].As regions evolve, their economies become more complex, and they tend to diversify into related activities. Although there is a bright side to this diversification process in terms of economic development, there may also be a dark side to it, as it possibly contributes to regional inequalities. The paper uses data on industries and patents to analyze the diversification patterns of 283 regions in 32 European countries over the past 15 years. We find that only the most economically advanced regions have the opportunity to diversify into highly complex activities. These regions tend to focus on related high-complex activities, while lagging regions focus on related low-complex activities, creating a spatial inequality feedback loop. This pattern creates a wicked problem for innovation policy: the strategy needed to improve the innovativeness of the European knowledge system might disproportionately benefit regions that are already developed and foster disparities.preprintpublishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin