Agglomeration and interregional network effects on European R&D productivity

This paper explores the effects of intra-regional agglomeration and interregional networking on the productivity of R&D across EU regions. The paper is based on the spatial econometric modelling framework presented in Varga (2000), and further develops a methodology for estimating the dynamic effects of agglomeration and interregional networks on R&D productivity in regional knowledge creation (measured by patent applications and publications) at the level of EU regions. This empirical modelling framework is applied to classify EU regions into different tiers according to the strengths of their agglomeration effects. These effects are then compared to the network effects of interregional connectedness as reflected in regional participation in the EU Framework Programme for Research. The estimated model is used then for an assessment of the impacts of EU Framework Programme expenditures on technological development and for carrying out policy impact simulations.Agglomeration, network effects, R&D productivity

Metropolitan Edison and cosmopolitan Pasteur? Agglomeration and interregional research network effects on European R&D productivity

This article examines empirically the relative influence of static and dynamic agglomeration effects on the one hand and research networking [measured by Framework Programme (FP) participation] on the other on regional R&D productivity in the European Union. We found that agglomeration is an important predictor of R&D productivity in the case of market-oriented (Edison-type) research while interregional scientific networking is an important determinant of R&D productivity in the case of science-driven (Pasteur-type) research. Importantly, the two determinants are never jointly significant. This finding indicates that in a knowledge production context, and contrary to what may happen in other areas of economic activity, agglomeration and scientific networking are neither substitutes nor complements but operate at distinct parts of the knowledge production process. Our findings uncover the principal components of regional knowledge production processes across European regions in a dynamic setting. They therefore allow us to explore counterfactual scenarios and characterize the effects of policy interventions. A simulation of the likely impacts of FP6 funds on regional R&D productivity demonstrates that the dynamic effect is greater in regions with high agglomeration

Theoretical underpinnings and future directions of European Union research policy: a paradigm shift?

Emerging tendencies in research policy call forth the cohesion–competitiveness dichotomy and implicitly advocate the hollowing out of cohesion objectives from future European Union (EU) research policy design. We trace the origins of this debate to the incomplete paradigm shift from the ‘mechanistic’ to the ‘systemic’ construal of technological change in policy discourse, manifest in the decisive influence the former still exercises on the objectives and instrumentalities of EU research policy. We look at some indications of this influence and we claim that they draw largely on reductionist conceptual schemes and sparse empirical evidence. We also examine the rationale for public intervention in the innovation process in two contrasting theoretical contexts, the neoclassical and the neo-Schumpeterian. We argue that the new tendencies in EU research policy stem from a mechanistic conception of cohesion and competitiveness as antagonistic notions and a normatively biased interpretation of neo-Schumpeterian arguments, and we scrutinise their inconsistencies

Does high-quality research require "critical mass"?

Charles Clarke, the UK's education secretary from 2002 to 2004, once asked: "Should we enable more of the best researchers to focus on research, and develop a more professional teaching force for universities specialising in teaching?" The drift of research funding decisions in British universities since then has been to concentrate resources on a few key institutions that already command the bulk of research finance. We have been told that world-class research requires "critical mass", and this is to be found in the "golden triangle" formed by Oxford, Cambridge, and London; those institutions elsewhere that do not have critical mass would be better left without any research funding at all than encouraged to continue to waste national resources on the small-scale, low-value projects that are the only kind of work they are capable of