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The main goal of this paper is to empirically examine the effects of related and unrelated variety on per employee income in Polish NUTS 2 regions, and the resulting income inequality. The study is based on regional panel data for the 2003–2018 period using the GMM estimator system. The positive effect of related variety on per employee income and the negative effect of unrelated variety on per employee income are reported. Our simulation results show that regional income inequality could be reduced by promoting related variety in eastern regions of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel approach to capture 'buzz', the vibrancy and knowledge exchange propensity of localised informal communication flows. Building on a conceptual framework based on relational economic geography, we argue the content of buzz may allow to probe into the character of places and investigate what is 'in the air' within regional entrepreneurial milieux. In particular, we analyse big data to listen for the presence of buzz about innovation – defined by discursive practices that reflect an innovative atmosphere – and explore how this may influence regional firm creation. Using information from 180 million geolocated Tweets comprising almost two billion words across NUTS3 regions in the UK for the year 2014, our results offer novel evidence, robust to different model specifications, that regions characterised by a relatively higher intensity of discussion and vibrancy around topics related to innovation may provide a more effective set of informal resources for sharing and recombination of ideas, defining regional capabilities to support and facilitate entrepreneurial processes. The findings contribute to the literature on the intangible dimensions in the geography of innovation and offer new insights on the potential of natural language processing for economic geography research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of the regional context with regard to the influence of human capital and knowledge spillovers on SMEs' financial soundness. Our empirical setting is based on a multilevel analysis of panel data, which allows superior treatment of hierarchical data. The analysis is applied to SMEs belonging to the manufacturing sector and operating in four European countries over the period 2010–2015. We find that a combination of individual and regional‐level characteristics explains firm soundness better than individual features alone. Furthermore, we find that a high local educational level and knowledge spillovers improve firm soundness and that their effects vary according to the regional level of knowledge. These results are confirmed by several robustness tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the effect of knowledge spillovers on new firm formation across Greek regions in manufacturing over the period 2002–2010. The econometric analysis results reveal that knowledge spillovers, as proxied by innovation and high-tech labor measures, positively affect regional new firm formation rates. Intra-sectoral spillovers, as captured by geographic sectoral specialization and industrial intensity, also positively affect regional new firm formation. In contrast, inter-sectoral spillovers, as proxied by regional industrial diversity, reduce new firm formation across regions. The examination of other control variables suggests that GDP growth and small firms stimulate regional new firm formation, whereas sunk costs and unemployment have a discouraging effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge externalities affect high and low growth firms differently. This paper develops two theoretical arguments. The knowledge equilibrium argument postulates that knowledge externalities weaken high growth firms for the benefit of low growth firms until performance differences vanish. The knowledge competition argument proposes that high growth firms are better positioned to identify, attract, and integrate knowledge, thereby expanding the performance gap between high and low growth firms. Based on 188,936 observations of 32,736 Swedish firms from 2004 to 2011, it is analysed whether knowledge externalities enable high growth firms to surge ahead or low growth firms to catch up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University Spin-Offs (USOs) are actively involved in the knowledge spillover process and fully integrated in the regional innovation systems. Drawing on the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship and using a multilevel approach of analysis, we explore whether the region's knowledge spillover and the firm's absorptive capacity jointly determine the innovative performance of USOs. At regional level, technological spillovers, production spillovers, and human capital spillovers have been considered. The results from a cross-national panel sample of 401 and 711 Spanish and Italian USOs, over the period 2005–13 and located in twenty-two administrative regions, show that only the production spillovers have a significant positive effect on the USO's innovative activity. Firm-specific characteristics are important for explaining USOs' innovation. More specifically, firm age has a negative effect, while firm size seems to have a positive effect. Additionally, USOs active in high-tech sectors seem to perform better in their innovation activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The commons problem is even more severe than standard economic analysis suggests due to accumulated and new technology accompanied by spillovers of nonrival knowledge, creating a second market failure. The resulting endogenous dynamic increasing returns to scale external to producers that create endogenous growth of production lead to ongoing and accelerating rates of natural capital depletion. Optimum and open-access steady-state equilibriums indicated by canonical models may not exist, and corresponding resource stocks vary considerably from conventional wisdom. Market-based solutions alone for the commons problem are insufficient to achieve optimal economic welfare, and require a complementary technology policy for the second market failure and dynamic increasing returns to scale arising from nonrival ideas and knowledge spillovers and social learning. An empirical example illustrates the impact of technological change and accompanying knowledge spillovers and social learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Empirical results on the link between growth and diversity in (un)related industries proved to be highly dependent on the specific regional, temporal and econometric context. Using highly disaggregated employment data at the sub‐regional level, we find that higher employment growth in Austria is mainly linked to unrelated variety. However, in‐depth analyses by sectors and regional regimes illustrate substantial heterogeneity in the results, with services and a large number of relatively small non‐urban regions driving the overall results. Thus, our findings argue against structural policy conclusions based on assessments neglecting the specific sectoral and regional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper analyses the role of the employers' education on the spread of temporary contracts. Taking advantage of a unique firm‐level dataset, we test whether the share of fixed term workforce in a firm is affected by the employer's level of education. Furthermore, we test whether knowledge spillovers arising from the agglomeration of university graduate employers affect the incidence of temporary employment in the firms located in the area. In both cases we find a negative effect. Interestingly, only small firms are influenced by the spillovers. The possible problems of endogeneity of the agglomeration variable are coped with an IV approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the full range of effects of knowledge properties and explains how knowledge properties such as transient appropriability, non-exhaustibility, and indivisibility do not only have negative effects, but also positive ones. Knowledge externalities help reduce the cost of knowledge and imitation externalities reduce the revenue and profitability of innovations. Their effects need to be considered jointly in a single analytical framework. An analysis of their combined effects questions the scope of application of the 'Arrovian postulate' according to which the limited appropriability of knowledge due to its uncontrolled dissemination reduces invention. This ignores spillovers of outside knowledge, which increases invention. These are the two opposing faces of the limited appropriability of knowledge. Policy implications suggest that along with public interventions designed to support the supply of knowledge and to compensate for missing incentives, much attention should be paid to all interventions that favour the dissemination of knowledge and the knowledge connectivity of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the effects of intra- and inter-regional knowledge spillovers on innovative activities in German states using the augmented Griliches-Jaffe knowledge production function. The "Harris market potential" type index is calculated to proxy for inter-regional knowledge transfers of two types: industrial knowledge transfers generated from the business enterprise sector and academic spillovers generated from universities across all German states. The model also includes the concentration of high-tech enterprises, in order to capture the agglomeration effect in the local economy. The estimation results reveal that not only do local private and university research efforts have a positive and significant effect on local innovative activities, but there are also important interregional knowledge spillovers across the German regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of new industries demands access to local capabilities. Little attention has yet been paid to the role of spillovers from neighbour regions for industrial diversification, nor has the role of network linkages between neighbour regions been investigated. As the spread of capabilities has a strong geographical bias, we expect regions to develop new industries in which their neighbour regions are specialized. To test this hypothesis, we analyse the development of new industries in US states during the period 2000-2012. We show that a US state has a higher probability of developing a comparative advantage in a new industry if a neighbour state is specialized in that industry. We also show that neighbour US states have more similar export structures. This export similarity seems to be explained by higher social connectivity between neighbour states, as embodied in their bilateral migration patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of academic and private R&D spending in the frame of a knowledge production function estimated across 3,109 US counties. We distinguish the role of local, face-to-face, knowledge spillovers that are determined by geographical proximity from distant spillovers captured by a matrix of patent creation-citation flows. The advantage of the latter matrix is its capacity to capture the direction of the spillovers. We control for the spatial heterogeneity between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties as well as between states. Our empirical results show that spillovers due to private knowledge contribute to higher returns in metropolitan counties than in nonmetropolitan regions. On the other hand, knowledge created in the academia leads to spillovers displaying spatially homogeneous returns. Our results imply that future innovation policies need to grasp more fully the role of distant knowledge spillovers, especially those generated in the academia, and recognize better the presence of heterogeneity in the sources and location of knowledge creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines investment decisions regarding innovation and emissions abatement in a dynamic framework, where knowledge stock is an impure public good. We take a sector perspective based on neo Schumpeterian theory that emphasises the role of both sector and innovation systems. We interpret results taking into account sector and country based institutional, market and policy conditions. Econometric outcomes, based on an original sector dataset which exploits the NAMEA source for 15 European Union (EU) countries and 23 manufacturing sectors in the time frame 1995–2006, show that innovation efforts are positively correlated to various spillover effects. Those effects include the emissions abatement of the other sectors, thus pointing out the relevance of forces which opposite typical free riding behaviour in public or mixed public good frameworks. Different reactivity strengths for different global and local emissions also allow us to disclose the specific role of technological and economic complementarity. When considering CO2 emissions, innovation is mainly triggered by national interactions, a fact which is coherent with a dominance of national innovation and policy systems in the EU. The result is also consistent with the fact that CO2 abatement technologies heavily regard energy efficiency that provides joint private and public benefits. The fact that NMVOC abatement efforts by other sectors from abroad impact R&D investments positively means that, in some cases, a realm of sectoral systems of innovation is also relevant. The different evidence between local and global externalities is surely explained not only by the different technological and economic contents, but also by the fact that the EU has witnessed different policy implementation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In a cluster and in a network the figure of the entrepreneurs appear as an apparatus of social relations and cooperation. We believe that entrepreneurial networks are key elements for a cultural quality system, but recent literature tends to not consider the social flow (internal) of spillovers produced by these (entrepreneurial) networks. The purpose of this paper is to stress the role of entrepreneurs through a conceptual map that relies upon strategic entrepreneurial networks. We suggest to fill a theoretical gap in entrepreneurial literature, and make the figure and role of entrepreneurial networking team emerge with a strategic role for creating opportunities and new social knowledge. From our interpretation appears what is still unexpressed or not well explicated in literature: the entrepreneurial team and its natural attitude in producing social knowledge. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]