The spatial component of R&D networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates how geography influences international R&D collaborations by analyzing a large dataset, revealing that distant collaborations are more common than expected and exploring the local buzz and global pipelines hypothesis.

Contribution

It introduces a micro-geographic approach to analyze R&D networks at multiple scales and provides empirical evidence on the significance of transnational collaborations.

Findings

Transnational R&D collaborations at large distances are more frequent than expected.

City-level importance is high but distance ambiguity exists in economic cooperation.

Evidence supports the local buzz and global pipelines hypothesis in R&D networks.

Abstract

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.