This paper examines the main contributions of universities to the economic growth of Spanish regions. It calculates the separate effects of the different university functions on the regional economy, namely the creation of human capital, research and technology transfer. It includes a panel data...

Human capital, scientific research, and technology are the three chief mechanisms promoting knowledge spillovers from universities to firms. Based on a study of the impact of Spain’s 1983 University Reform Act (LRU), which opened the door to the foundation of new universities and faculties,...

The energy industry is facing substantial challenges that require innovation to be fostered. Nevertheless, levels of R&D investment and innovation remain quite low in comparison with other sectors. In this paper we analyse the main drivers of R&D investment and obstacles to innovation in the...

The effectiveness of R&D subsidies can vary substantially depending on their characteristics. Specifically, the amount and intensity of such subsidies are crucial issues in the design of public schemes supporting private R&D. Public agencies determine the intensities of R&D subsidies for firms...

Human capital is one of the most important channels via which universities positively affect regional development. This paper analyzes the relationship between university characteristics and graduation rates, and the role of regional characteristics in this process. We assemble a dataset for the...

This paper links governance reforms with potential improvements in efficiency in Spanish universities. Taking the classic DEA model as our starting-point, we focus on the study of efficient units to identify the ones that present atypical behaviour (outliers) and should be removed from the...

This paper empirically analyzes economies of scale and of scope in the production of research and technology transfer outputs in the Spanish public university system. We employ the flexible fixed cost quadratic function which relates total university R&D expenditure and the budget of the...

The implementation of public programs to support business R&D projects requires the establishment of a selection process. This selection process faces various difficulties, which include the measurement of the impact of the R&D projects as well as selection process optimization among projects...