Natural concentration in industrial research collaboration

B. Westbrock

No 08-15, Working Papers from Utrecht School of Economics

Abstract: Empirical work suggests that the network of research and development alliances is asymmetric, with a small number of firms involved in the majority of partnerships. This paper relates the structure of the collaboration network to a fundamental characteristic of the demand for research output: the benefits of knowledge accumulation create private and social incentives for a concentration of collaborative activities. I theoretically investigate the formation of bilateral collaborative links in two different industry settings, one socially managed, the other oligopolistic. I find that in both cases a concentrated network is the typical equilibrium structure as well as the socially efficient structure.

Keywords: R&D collaboration; market structure; networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-knm, nep-mic, nep-net, nep-ppm and nep-soc
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