INNOVATION ACTIVITIES EXPLAINED BY FIRM ATTRIBUTES AND LOCATION

This paper examines systematically the importance of location versus a vector of firm attributes on firms’ innovation engagements. The various factors that can influence a firm’s innovation efforts are divided into (i) firm location, reflecting the regional milieu, and (ii) firm attributes such as corporate structure, nature of the knowledge production, type of industry and a set of specific firm characteristics. The study is based on information about 2, 094 individual Swedish firms, where a firm may be non-affiliated or belong to a group (multi-firm enterprise), domestically or foreign owned. The study concludes that the propensity to be innovative differs between the five macro-region investigated. Among innovative firms, however, the R&D intensity as well as most other innovation-activity characteristics remain invariant with regard to location, when controlling for the skill composition, physical capital intensity, industry, corporate structure firm, size and market extension