Spatial Interaction Modelling of Cross-Region R&D Collaborations Empirical Evidence from the EU Framework Programmes

TL;DR

This study analyzes cross-region R&D collaborations in the EU, revealing that geographical and technological proximity significantly influence collaboration patterns, with technological closeness being more impactful, especially within industries.

Contribution

It uniquely uses regional-level data and Poisson spatial interaction models to identify determinants of cross-region R&D collaboration patterns in the EU.

Findings

Geographical proximity significantly affects collaboration intensity.

Technological closeness has a stronger influence than geographical distance.

Intra-industry collaborations are more sensitive to geographical distance.

Abstract

The focus of this study is on cross-region R&D collaboration networks in the EU Framework Programmes (FP's). In contrast to most other empirical studies in this field, we shift attention to regions as units of analysis, i.e. we use aggregated data on research collaborations at the regional level. The objective is to identify determinants of cross-region collaboration patterns. In particular, we are interested whether geographical and technological distances are significant determinants of interregional cooperation. Further we investigate differences between intra-industry networks and public research networks (i.e. universities and research organisations). The European coverage is achieved by using data on 255 NUTS-2 regions of the 25 pre-2007 EU member-states, as well as Norway and Switzerland. We adopt a Poisson spatial interaction modelling perspective to analyse these questions. The dependent variable is the intensity of collaborative interactions between two regions, the independent variables are region-specific characteristics and variables that measure the separation between two regions such as geographical or technological distance. The results provide striking evidence that geographical factors are important determinants of cross-region collaboration intensities, but the effect of technological proximity is stronger. R&D collaborations occur most often between organisations that are located close to each other in technological space. Moreover geographical distance effects are significantly higher for intra-industry than for public research collaborations.