We study the role of geography in R&D networks by means of a quantitative,
micro-geographic approach. Using a large database that covers international R&D
collaborations from 1984 to 2009, we localize each actor precisely in space
through its latitude and longitude. This allows us to analyze the R&D network
at all geographic scales simultaneously. Our empirical results show that
despite the high importance of the city level, transnational R&D collaborations
at large distances are much more frequent than expected from similar networks.
This provides evidence for the ambiguity of distance in economic cooperation
which is also suggested by the existing literature. In addition we test whether
the hypothesis of local buzz and global pipelines applies to the observed R&D
network by calculating well-defined metrics from network theory.Comment: Working paper, 22 pages, 7 figure