Recent empirical evidence strongly supports Jacobs's (1969) externality hypothesis that urban diversity provides a more favorable environment for economic development than urban specialization. In order to correctly gauge Jacobs's hypothesis, economic development should be understood as a result...

This paper examines the effects of regional R&D on patenting for Sweden within an accessibility framework. We use two measures of patenting: number of patents granted per capita and a composite of quality-adjusted patents which we regard as an innovation indicator, respectively. Three...

Patent data play an important role as indicators of inventive and innovative activity across regions. This paper examines if the geographical distribution changes and in what direction if patent data are quality-adjusted. A quality index is constructed by means of factor analysis on the...

Knowledge production function approaches to estimation of knowledge flows in regions have recently come under attack not to open the ’black box’ of knowledge creation and it has been questioned whether spillovers really are the key determinant of knowledge diffusion rather than market...

Industrial classifications offer arguably poor schemes for classifying innovative activity. Moreover, a single measure incorporating technological relatedness between the inherent classes, captures the neglected issue of Jacobs (1969) and Marshall (1920), that the degree of relatedness of...

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the previously observed gap between growth of R&D and economic performance, known as the ‘Swedish paradox’, is a general phenomenon across all sectors of the economy, or only occurs in specific industry segments. The dataset used for the analysis...

We use a new, comprehensive database covering Swedish industry and service firms 1985-2002, to examine trends in the ratio between patenting and R&D (PR-ratio). There is a fall in PR-ratios in the long run (1985-2002) on the aggregate level and for all sectors. In general low-tech sectors...

Two stylized facts about innovations form the underlying motivation for this paper. First, various studies have found that innovations tend to be geographically concentrated. Secondly, innovation data based on patent counts indicate that most patents have very low economic value. It has also...

This paper examines the effects of regional R&D on patenting for Sweden within an accessibility framework. We use two measures of patenting: number of patents granted per capita and a composite of quality-adjusted patents which we regard as an innovation indicator, respectively. Three...

We use a comprehensive database of Swedish manufacturing and service firms to examine trends in aggregate and sectoral research productivity 1985-1998, defined as the ratio between patenting and R&D. Quality indices are composed of forward and backward citations, family size and opposition. In...