Cluster policy, innovation, and firm productivity: An econometric assessment of the Flemish Spearhead Cluster Program

Pierluigi Angelino, Dirk Czarnitzki and Astrid Volckaert

No 24-031, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: The Flemish government launched its Spearhead Cluster (SHC) policy in 2017. The aim is to boost strategic sectors by setting up cluster initiatives which coordinate collaborative R&D initiatives. In this paper, we analyze whether becoming a member of such a cluster initiative has an impact on the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of the firm. We exploit firm-level data between 2013 and 2020 to estimate TFP and apply a difference-in-differences approach to assess the programs' treatment effects. We find that becoming a member of a cluster has an average positive impact on firmlevel TFP of between 1 to 4.4 percent, depending on the econometric specification. These results are the first to provide an insight into the impact of the Flemish SHC policy on productivity.

Keywords: cluster associations; cluster policy; innovation policy; total factor productivity; conditional difference-in-difference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 L25 L52 L53 O25 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eff, nep-ino, nep-mac, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/300010/1/1894055322.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Cluster policy, innovation, and firm productivity. An econometric assessment of the Flemish Spearhead Cluster program (2024)
Working Paper: Cluster policy, innovation, and firm productivity. An econometric assessment of the Flemish Spearhead Cluster program (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:300010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().