Academic excellence, local knowledge spillovers and innovation in Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper studies whether high-quality research in first-tier universities has greater local knowledge spillovers than that in lower-tier universities. First-tier universities are identified as those among the top 150, according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Several indicators of academic excellence are included among the contextual drivers of innovation in a multivariate probit regression applied to European manufacturing data. The results show that top-10 publications of second-tier universities exhibit the highest positive association with product innovation of science-based sectors, but negative associations with top-10 publications of first- and second-tier universities are evidenced for process innovation in this macro-sector.

KEYWORDS:

• product and process innovation
• firm research and development (R&D) collaboration
• academic excellence
• Scopus publications
• Academic Ranking of World Universities
• regional innovation systems

JEL:

• D22
• I23
• O3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank the editor, Michael Fritsch, two anonymous referees, Sergio Destefanis (Università degli Studi di Salerno) and Francesco Quatraro (Università degli Studi di Torino) for helpful comments and suggestions. They also thank the participants at the following conferences for comments and suggestions: 59th Annual Conference of Italian Economists’ Association, 4th Geography of Innovation Conference, XVIth Triple Helix Conference, and the International Conference on Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. The usual disclaimer applies.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Cristian Barra http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8108-3888

Ornella Wanda Maietta http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7158-4793

Roberto Zotti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9493-7659

Notes

1. In 2012, there were 18,704 (5.2% over manufacturing population) of enterprises cooperating with universities or other higher education institutions in the EU-28. Of those, enterprises for which this kind of cooperation was the most valuable method were 31% (authors’ own calculation on based on the Community Innovation Survey data; EUROSTAT).

2. R&D intensity was split into: intra-muros R&D intensity, extra-muros R&D with universities/research laboratories, and extra-muros R&D with other firms/consultants.

3. Financial incentives provided by the public sector in 2009, whereas R&D subsidies are tax allowances and financial incentives for R&D activities in the period 2007–09.

4. The number of first-tier universities is 32, that of second-tier universities is 103 and that of third-tier universities is 226.

5. For robustness, we also used the academic excellence indicator of the first- and lower (the sum of second- and third-) tier universities in the province. The results, available from the authors upon request, evidence the absence of non-linear effects.

6. The VIFs, reported in Table A2 in Appendix A in the supplemental data online, suggest the absence of multicollinearity among the regressors.

7. The correlation coefficients are reported in Table A3 in Appendix A in the supplemental data online.