This paper analyzes empirically the channels through which university research affects industry innovation. We examine how the opening of new science, medicine and engineering departments in Italy during 1985-2000 affected regional innovation systems. We find that creation of a new university...

Do world-leading researchers from developing countries contribute to upgrading locally, or do they disengage from the local context? The paper investigates the scientific collaborations of university-based science and technology researchers in the database of the South African National Research...

Over the twentieth century universities in the industrialized world have evolved from being "universities of culture" to "universities of innovation." Policy makers and universities themselves see that one of their major roles is supporting industrial innovation and thus economic growth. We...

Although intuitively appealing (and common), drawing network strategy implications from empirical evidence of network performance effects in pooled cross-section is not necessarily warranted. This is because network positions can influence both the mean and variance of firm performance....

This paper presents an economic model of R&D network formation through the creation of strategic alliances. Firms are randomly endowed with knowledge elements. They base their alliance decisions purely on the technological fit of potential partners, ignoring social capital considerations and...

Network formation is often said to be driven by social capital considerations. A typical pattern observed in the empirical data on strategic alliances is that of small world networks: dense subgroups of firms interconnected by (few) clique-spanning ties. The typical argument is that there is...

We model knowledge diffusion in a population of agents situated on a network, interacting only over direct ties. Some agents are by nature traders, others are by nature "givers": traders demand a quid pro quo for information transfer; givers do not. We are interested in efficiency of diffusion...

When agents use informal interaction to exchange knowledge, their production relations may develop as emergent properties of their social relations and may exhibit homophily. The Saliyar community cluster in India is an archetype of this. This cluster’s experience is investigated on how its...

Empirical research on strategic alliances has focused on the idea that alliance partners are selected on the basis of social capital considerations. In this paper we emphasize instead the role of complementary knowledge stocks (broadly defined) in partner selection, arguing not only that...

This is a model of knowledge exchange by means of informal interaction among agents in low technology clusters. What this study seeks to do is to colour these exchanges by placing them in an environment of complex social relations, test whether the small-world network structure is the most...