Regional Specialization and Universities: The New Verus the Old

This paper analyzes the impact universities have on regional development and as to whether a difference can be detected between the influence of the old and new universities. To achieve this end a unique dataset on the researchers’ view regarding the universities role in commer-cialization, distinguishing between new universities (established around 1970) and old univer-sities (established in the 15th and 17th century), is initially utilized. In the subsequent stage spatially disaggregated data is implemented in a two-step Heckman regression analysis to ex-amine whether a relationship exists between the universities research specialization and re-gional production specialization 1975 to 1999. The results reveal that there are considerable differences across universities, albeit primarily unrelated to the age of the universities. Fi-nally, the impact of universities on regional productivity in knowledge-based industries is ex-amined.