DOES ECONOMIC-GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION AFFECT INNOVATION PROCESSES IN RUSSIAN REGIONS?

A favourable economic-geographical position (EGP) of regions and cities is one of the factors of their socio-economic development. Economic agents can take advantages of their proximity to the major markets of goods and services, thereby reducing their transport costs and increasing their profitability. In the sphere of innovation, proximity to the innovation centres may also significantly affect the creation of new knowledge and technologies, due to the existence of tacit knowledge and knowledge spillovers. The authors propose the term ‘innovation-geographical position’ by analogy with EGP. It has been demonstrated that location matters to regional innovation output. If there is 1 % more new technologies in neighbouring regions, there are approximately 0.35–0.58 % more newly created technologies in the target region. Proximity to the world centres of new technologies has even greater impact.