The economic geography literature assumes that large leading firms (technology gatekeepers)(TGs) with high absorptive capacity and high-intensity R&D expenditures, shape the district learning process. However, there is an absence in the literature of a dynamic analysis of the role of the TG....

Creative cities are seen as important sites for the generation of new ideas, products and processes. Yet, beyond case studies of a few high-profile cities, there is little empirical evidence on the link between local creative industries concentration and innovation. This paper addresses this gap...

This aim of this paper is to present the objectives and scope of an evolutionary approach to economic geography. We argue that the goal is not only to utilise the concepts and ideas from evolutionary economics (and evolutionary thinking more broadly) to help interpret and explain how the...

The article presents a regional innovation policy model, based on the idea of constructing regional advantage. This policy model brings together concepts like related variety, knowledge bases and policy platforms. Related variety attaches great importance to knowledge spillovers across...

Over the past decades, economic and innovation policy across Europe moved in the direction of creating regional clusters of related firms and institutions. Creating clusters through public policy is risky, complex and costly, however. Moreover, it is not necessary to rely on clusters to...

This paper investigates how physical, organisational, institutional, cognitive, social, and ethnic proximities between inventors shape their collaboration decisions. Using a new panel of UK inventors and a novel identification strategy, this paper systematically explores the net effects of all...

The paper investigates the impact of R&D subsidies on regional innovation efficiency. Building on a rich panel data set covering 270 German labor market regions and four industries, it is particularly shown that subsidies for R&D cooperation are a suitable policy measure for stimulating the...

In agglomeration studies, the effects of various regional externalities related to knowledge spillovers remain largely unclear. To explain innovation clustering, scholars emphasize the contribution of Localized Knowledge Spillovers (LKS) and, specifically when estimating the Knowledge Production...

This paper aims to explain whether firm-specific features, their engagement in collaboration networks and their location influence patent activity of biotech firms in Germany in the period 1997-2004. First, we demonstrate that non-collaborative R&D subsidies do not increase patent intensity of...

The importance of R&D subsidies for innovation activities is highlighted by numerous firm-level studies. These approaches miss however the systematic regional character of innovation activities and potential firm-spanning effects of this policy measure. The literature on regional innovation...