Firms’ embeddedness into knowledge networks has received much attention in the literature. However, little is known about the composition of firms’ ego-networks with respect to different types of proximities. Based on survey data of 295 firms in eight European regions, we show that the...

The importance of geographical proximity for interaction and knowledge sharing has been discussed extensively in economic geography in recent years. There is increasing consensus that it is just one out of many types of proximities that might be relevant. We argue that proximity may be a crucial...

A growing body of work emphasizes the importance of regional factors for regional innovativeness. In this paper, about seventy variables approximating the social-economic characteristics of regions are aggregated to twelve regional factors. In four industry-specific set-ups their influence on...

Measuring the innovation performance of regions or nations has been repeatedly done in the literature. What is missing in the literature is a discussion of what innovation performance of a region means. How do regions or nations contribute really to the innovation output of firms? And how can...

We investigate the lead-lag relationship between growth of patent applications, growth of R&D, and growth of total sectoral employment for 270 German labour market regions over the period 1999-2005. Our unique panel dataset includes information on four two-digit industries, namely Chemistry,...

A key question raised in recent years is which factors determine the structure of inter-organizational networks. While the focus has primarily been on different forms of proximity between organizations, which are determinants at the dyad level, recently determinants at the node and structural...

Concepts like regional innovation systems, innovative milieu, and learning regions emphasize the positive contribution of intra-regional cooperation to firmsÕ innovation performance. Despite substantial numbers of case studies, the quantitative empirical evidence for this claim is thin. Using...