Innovation in Russia: the territorial dimension

Riccardo Crescenzi and Alexander Jaax

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The debate on Russia’s innovation performance has paid little attention to the role of geography. This paper addresses this gap by integrating an evolutionary dimension in an ‘augmented’ regional knowledge production function framework to examine the territorial dynamics of knowledge creation in Russia. The empirical analysis identifies a strong link between regional R&D expenditure and patenting performance. However, R&D appears inadequately connected to regional human capital. Conversely, Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) play a fundamental role as ‘global knowledge pipelines’. The incorporation of historical variables reveals that the Russian case is a striking example of long-term pathdependency in regional patterns of knowledge generation. Endowment with Soviet-founded science cities remains a strong predictor of current patenting. However, current innovation drivers and policies also concur to enhance (or hinder) innovation performance in all regions. The alignment of regional innovation efforts, exposure to localised knowledge flows and injections of ‘foreign’ knowledge channelled by MNEs make path-renewal and pathcreation possible, opening new windows of locational opportunity.

Keywords: innovation; R&D; evolutionary economic geography; regions; BRICS; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O32 O33 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-sbm, nep-tid, nep-tra and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published in Economic Geography, 1, January, 2017, 93(1), pp. 66 - 88. ISSN: 0013-0095

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66948/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Innovation in Russia: The Territorial Dimension (2017)
Working Paper: Innovation in Russia: the territorial dimension (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:66948

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