Life below excellence: exploring the links between top-ranked universities and regional competitiveness

ABSTRACT

This paper examines interactions between the presence of top-ranked universities and other conditions that encourage regional competitiveness. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was conducted to assess the combined effect of the conditions. The analysis yields several noteworthy conclusions. First, no single condition is necessary for a region to be competitive. Second, R&D expenditure is important for regional competitiveness. Third, different configurations of conditions are sufficient for high competitiveness in different regional clusters. Furthermore, some of these configurations do not include the presence of top-ranked universities. A ‘magic recipe’ consists of the combination of a private research system, an inter-firm collaboration network and high levels of human capital. The analysis shows that university excellence is valuable. However, in terms of its contribution to regional development, it is not crucial and must always be contextualised. This conclusion is important for smart strategic planning of local knowledge systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge-based economy
• regional development
• top-ranked universities
• public and private R&D
• fsQCA

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• O38
• I23
• I25
• I28

Acknowledgements

José María García Alvarez-Coque and Francisco Mas-Verdú wish to thank Project AGL2015-65897-C3-3-R, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain), for supporting this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Jose-Maria Garcia-Alvarez-Coque and Francisco Mas-Verdú wish to thank Project RTI2018-093791-B-C22, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Spain), for supporting this research.