Knowledge spillovers and local innovation systems: a critical survey

The paper re-examines critically the growing literature on localised knowledge spillovers (LKSs), and finds the econometric evidence on the subject still lacking of a firm theoretical background, especially in respect of the more recent developments in the economics of knowledge. Therefore such evidence, and even more the concept itself of LKS, should not be read as supportive of new industrial geographers' work on industrial districts, hi-tech agglomerations and 'milieux innovateur'. On the contrary, it may represent a threat to the necessary efforts for gaining more theoretical rigour and getting more empirical fieldwork done. Key words: knowledge, innovation, spillovers, externalities, regional agglomeration. JEL classification: D62, O30, R12

What do you mean by "mobile"? Multi-applicant inventors in the European Bio-Technology Industry

Many recent papers dealing with the issue of knowledge spillovers have relied on patent data to extract information on so-called mobile inventors that is inventors designated by patent applications filed by different companies. In this paper we follow in this tradition, but with the aim of setting straight a number of methodological issues. By making use of information on the identity and history of those applicants, we then propose a taxonomy of the phenomena behind multi-applicant inventorship, which distinguishes between job mobility, mobility as a result of M&As, a case which we suspect to be dominated by the markets for research and for technologies, and residuals cases. We then argue that different multi-applicant inventors’ categories have to do with different patterns of knowledge diffusion, which include both spillovers and markets for technology.Patents, mobile inventors, multi-applicant inventorship, knowledge diffusion

Small Worlds in Networks of Inventors and the Role of Science: An Analysis of France.

· Using data on patent applications at European Patent Office, we examine the structural properties of networks of inventors in France in different technologies, and how they depend from the inventive activity of scientists from universities and public research organizations (PROs). We revisit earlier findings on small world properties of social networks of inventors, and propose more rigorous tests of such hypothesis. We find that academic and PRO inventors contribute significantly to patenting in science‐based fields. Such contribution is decisive for the emergence of small world properties.networks, inventors, academic patenting, small world.

Institutional Change and Academic Patenting: French Universities and the Innovation Act of the 1999.

Recent empirical work in the field of university-industry technology transfer has stressed the importance of IPR-related reforms and university patenting has major forces behind the success of US high-tech industry. European policy-makers have been tempted to explain the poorer technological performance of their countries with the lower propensity of their academic institutions to get engaged in patenting and commercializing their research results. As a consequence, a number of measures have been taken to promote academic awareness of IPRs, as part of more comprehensive policies in favour of academic commercialization and entrepreneurship. This paper explores university patenting, and the related policies, in France. We provide evidence that university patenting in that countries has been underestimated by policy-makers’ perceptions: French academic scientists are in fact responsible for no less than 3% of patents by French inventors at the European Patent Office. However, only 10% of academic-invented patents are owned by domestic universities, with the remainder assigned both to firms and to Public Research Organizations (PROs). We then explore the impact of the Innovation Act, passed in France in 1999. We find that the Act has significantly increased the likelihood an academic patent to be assigned to a university rather than to a business company. We also find, that the opening of a technology transfer office in a university appears to have a stronger and more significant impact than the Act on the decision of universities to retain IPRs over their scientists’ discoveries.

Academic Patenting in Europe: New Evidence from the KEINS Database.

The paper provides summary statistics from the KEINS database on academic patenting in France, Italy, and Sweden. It shows that academic scientists in those countries have signed many more patents than previously estimated. This re‐evaluation of academic patenting comes by considering all patents signed by academic scientists active in 2004, both those assigned to universities and the many more held by business companies, governmental organizations, and public laboratories. Specific institutional features of the university and research systems in the three countries contribute to explain these ownership patterns, which are remarkably different from those observed in the US. In the light of these new data, European universities’ contribution to domestic patenting appears not to be much less intense than that of their US counterparts.

Brevetti universitari e economia della ricerca in Italia, Europa e Stati Uniti. Una rassegna dell\u2019evidenza recente

The paper examines the most recent empirical studies on the impact of university patenting on the economics of public research. Most contributions discuss the controversial effects of the Bayh-Dole Act in the US, or attempt to measure the scope of university patenting in Europe. We highlight two main research lines. The first one deals with the possibility that patenting research tools may slow down scientific progress, whose cumulative nature requires free access to the stock of existing knowledge. The second comprises works that attempt to test the impact of patenting on the scientists\u2019 publication activity, at the individual level. It is shown that academic inventors publish more frequently than their peers who do not contribute to patenting; and that no apparent trade-off exists between publishing and patenting activities. On the contrary, a moderate trade-off exists at the systemic level, due to the fact that the existence of patents in given research field discourages other scientists to join the field, thus limiting the cumulative process of scientific advancement

The South African Liberation Movements in Exile, c.1945-1970.

This thesis focuses on the reorganisation in exile of the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) of South Africa during the 1960s. The 1960s are generally regarded as a period of quiescence in the historiography of the South African liberation struggle. This study partially challenges such a view. It argues that although the 1960s witnessed the progressive silencing of all forms of opposition by the apartheid government in South Africa, this was also a difficult time of experimentation and change, during which the exiled liberation movements had to adjust to the dramatically altered conditions of struggle emerging in the post-Sharpeville context. The thesis traces the roots and early history of the international networks of solidarity between South Africa and Britain from the time of the 1945 Pan African Congress to the founding of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement in 1960. It proceeds to examine the first attempts by the South African liberation movements to set up an external presence through the South African United Front, the causes of its demise and its legacy in terms of future unity. The establishment of the external mission of the ANC, its activities, and its relationship with host African countries vis-a-vis that of the PAC are analysed in detail. The research then focuses on problems of representation emerging from the gradual take-over of the ANC external mission as the sole representative of the whole of the Congress Alliance as a result of the Rivonia raid and trial. It is suggested that the internal debate between the ANC and its allies, most notably the South African Communist Party, signal a transition from the multi-racial approach of the 1950s to the creation of a unitary, non-racial liberation front. Issues of strategy and tactics arising from the decision to embark on a path of armed struggle in the early part of the decade are also analysed, including the state of affairs within the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, and the complex relationship between military and political structures. Finally, the parallel development of the PAC in exile is reviewed, and some of its distinctive features are compared and contrasted to those of the ANC

The ANC between Home and Exile. Reflections on the Anti-Apartheid Struggle in Italy and Southern Africa

The ANC between Home and Exile is a collection of essays by South African and Italian scholars and activists originally presented at a conference held in Naples in November 2012 to commemorate the ANC centenary. One of its aims is to reflect historically on the different experiences of the ANC and the struggle against apartheid both in South Africa and in exile, particularly in the Italian context that has been under-represented in the historiography. This imbalance projects the erroneous impression that a country like Italy played only a marginal role in supporting the peoples of southern Africa in their connected struggles against colonialism, white minority rule and apartheid oppression and exploitation. The book thus seeks to accord a more central place to Italy, both as a site from where the ANC operated in exile, and as a key centre of international solidarity. The chapters in the book cover a number of themes in the history of the liberation struggle that span the Italian, South African and African contexts, the relationship between apartheid, exile and artistic creation, and some of the individual experiences of the Italian solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle. Rather than viewing these as discrete topics, the anthology attempts to bring these various contexts into dialogue by viewing them as part of the same continuum.\ud The book is directed at scholars of southern African history and politics, political commentators, and activists and a broader readership with an interest in South Africa’s liberation struggle