Evaluating the Strategy of Local Public Technology Centers in Regional Innovation Systems : Evidence from Japan

Local public technology centers, administrated by the prefectural and municipal governments, engage in providing technological support to small local firms. Using a comprehensive database, this paper quantitatively examines whether their strategy is contingent on or independent of the characteristics of a regional innovation system. The statistical analyses show that there are no significant differences between the strategies adopted by local public technology centers in line with the characteristics of the regional innovation system. This implies that the strategies were inefficient because economic welfare in the region would have improved if they had allocated resources in accordance with the characteristics of regional knowledge transfer