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This paper uses a Swedish micro-dataset containing 2,696,909 hires during the period 2002–2006 to assess the impact of job-related mobility on plant-level performance. The analysis classifies new recruits according to their work experience and level of formal qualification, as well as by the region of origin and of destination. New hires are divided into graduates and experienced workers and between high- and low-educated. The results point towards the importance of acknowledging both the experience and the skills of new recruits. The greatest benefits are related to hiring new workers from outside the region where the plant is located. The analysis also stresses the importance of geography, with plants in metropolitan regions gaining the most from labour mobility, while the benefits of mobility for plants in smaller, more peripheral regions are more diverse and dependent on both the type and origin of new workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper assesses the role for innovation of one aspect which has been generally overlooked by evolutionary economic geography: context. It analyses how context shapes the impact of collaboration on firm-level innovation for 1604 firms located in the five largest city regions of Norway. Specifically, the analysis shows how the benefits to firms of collaborating within regional, national, and international innovation networks are affected by the knowledge endowments of the region within which the firm is located. Using a logit regression analysis, we find, first, that only national and international networking have a significant positive impact on the likelihood of innovation (the former only for process innovation), whereas the regional knowledge endowments have no direct effect. Second, regional cooperation is particularly effective in regions with high investments in R&D, whereas international cooperation is important in regions with an educated workforce – and regional and national collaboration may be ineffective in such cases. We conclude that, in the case of Norway, context is essential in determining the capacity of firms to set up networks and innovate. Regions with an educated workforce can use the resulting absorptive capacity to successfully assimilate knowledge being diffused through global pipelines from faraway places. However, this absorptive capacity is likely to be heavily filtered if regional firms mainly rely on internal connections within Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Local economic development (LED) strategies are increasingly being recommended as an alternative or a complement to traditional development strategies. However, beyond a limited number of areas where ‘best practices’ have been identified, there has been little systematic monitoring of whether LED really works. This paper uses a purpose-built database of 898 municipalities in Mexico in order to assess, using a quantitative approach, whether the implementation of seven different components of LED – development plan, sustainability, entrepreneurship, capacity building, participation mechanisms, development links, and autonomy – has delivered greater human development across Mexican local governments. The results of the analysis indicate that municipalities engaging in LED during the last two decades have witnessed significant improvements in human development, relative to those which have overlooked LED strategies. The increase in human development has been greatest for those local authorities which have pursued capacity building, the establishment of additional development links and which have drafted a development plan. Greater independence from federal or state initiative has, by contrast, been detrimental for changes in human development at the local level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Firm characteristics – R&D intensity, firm size and human capital – determine the propensity of firms to collaborate with universities. • Firms that collaborate with other partners are also far more likely to collaborate, especially with local universities. • Research excellence is linked to lower local university industry collaboration. • Universities that achieve success in research quality tend to weaken their links with local and national firms. Research and innovation policy aims to boost research output and university-industry collaboration (UIC) in part to allow firms access to leading scientific knowledge. As part of their mission, universities in many countries are expected to contribute to innovation in their regions. However, the relationship between research output and UIC is unclear: research-intensive universities can produce frontier research, which is attractive to firms, but may simultaneously suffer from a gap between the research produced and the needs of local firms, as well as mission overload. This may hinder local firms' ability to cooperate with universities altogether or force them to look beyond the region for other suitable universities to interact with. This paper investigates the relationship between the research output of local universities and firms' participation in UICs across different geographical scales. It uses Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data for Norwegian firms and Scopus data on Norwegian universities' research output across various disciplines. The results demonstrate that local university research intensity and quality are negatively associated with firm participation in UICs at the local level. Firm characteristics, in particular the firm's general strategy towards cooperation and its geography, turn out to be much more important than university characteristics in explaining UICs. Notably, firms' cooperation with other external partners at the same scale is a strong predictor of UICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Innovation in Chinese firms is more dependent on factors internal than external to the firm. • The institutional quality of the city where the firm is located is an important exception. • Poor institutional quality represents a serious barrier for firm-level innovation in China. • Better institutions reduce the amount of time firms spend dealing with government regulations to facilitate innovation. • The cost of weak institutions for innovation is higher for private than for state-owned firms. Does the variation in the quality of local government institutions affect the capacity of firms to innovate? This paper uses a unique dataset that combines the specific features of 2,700 firms with the institutional and socioeconomic characteristics of the 25 cities in China where they operate, in order to assess the extent to which institutional quality – measured across four dimensions: rule of law, government effectiveness, corruption, and regulatory quality – affects both the innovation probability and intensity of firms. The results of the econometric analysis show that poor institutional quality in urban China is an important barrier for firm-level innovation. In particular, a deficient rule of law, high corruption, and a weak regulatory quality strongly undermine firm-level innovation. The role of these factors is far more limited in the case of innovation intensity. Better institutions also reduce the amount of time firms spend dealing with government regulations in order to facilitate innovation. The results also indicate that the cost of weak institutions for innovation is higher for private than for state-owned firms, at least in the early stages of innovation. In general, differences in institutional quality generate local urban ecosystems that impinge on the propensity of firms to innovate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Development strategies involving related and mutually-reinforcing actions lead to greater returns. • Strategic approaches solidly grounded in robust diagnoses are generally more successful. • Development strategies should be tailored according to where exactly a territory is situated on the development spectrum. • Institutions should become an integral part in the design and implementation of development strategies. • Strategies must respond to the scale, scope and nature of the development challenges that the territories for which they are designed face. The development policy landscape has, in recent years, been dominated by four types of interventions: (1) infrastructure expansion and development; (2) the attraction of inward investment; (3) the promotion of innovation and development of human capital; (4) the cultivation of agglomeration and physical co-location. This paper engages with these four broad policy types with a view to, first, assess and comment on the utility of these approaches in different development contexts, and, second, provide an indication of what has worked and what has not worked in the design and implementation of these strategic actions. It relies on a review of a handful of 'strategies of gain' and 'strategies of waste' to ascertain insights into the steps that should be taken to maximise the likelihood that territorial development policies – irrespective of the development axis towards which they are oriented – fulfil their potential and contribute to the reduction of the territorial disparities in developed and developing contexts alike. The lessons drawn from this review are four-fold: i) development strategies composed of multiple related and mutually-reinforcing actions and interventions across development areas deliver better results; ii) strategic approaches to the promotion of economic growth that are solidly grounded in robust diagnoses are generally more successful; iii) the awareness of where exactly the territory is situated on the development spectrum is crucial; and iv) the institutional dimension cannot be left un-addressed in the design and implementation of policy interventions. These lessons are supplemented by a general framework relating to how territorial approaches to development should be designed for areas at different points in their development trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]