R&D Spending and Knowledge Spillovers

Abstract:     
Understanding firm constraints in R&D expenditures is a key component to addressing broader economic goals. We investigate the role of local intensity of university-industry knowledge spillovers on the amount of firm R&D expenditure. To investigate this issue we use firm-level data
on R&D expenditures from Italy. We find that geographical variation in the R&D intensity of higher education sector, which is shown to be a good proxy for the local intensity of knowledge spillovers, plays an important role for the amount of R&D expenditures financed by the local business sector. We argue that our findings have important policy implications.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 27

Keywords: Firm, R&D, Banking Development, University-Industry Cooperation, Knowledge Spillovers, Geography

JEL Classification: D21, D24, G21, G28, O31, O32, O38

working papers series