Cooperation with public research institutions and success in innovation: Evidence from France and Germany

Stéphane Robin and Torben Schubert ()

Research Policy, 2013, vol. 42, issue 1, 149-166

Abstract: We evaluate the impact of cooperation with public research on firms’ product and process innovations in France and Germany using Community Innovation Survey data from 2004 and 2008. We find that cooperating with public research increases product innovation, but has no effect on process innovation, which depends more on firms’ openness. Our benchmark estimates, which are very similar in 2004 and 2008, suggest that the increase in product innovation is much higher in Germany than in France. Endogeneity tests show that the French benchmark estimate may be somewhat biased in 2004 but not in 2008, which hints at a persistent gap in the effect of cooperation between France and Germany. We derive two important policy implications from our results. First, public–private collaborations in research should not be encouraged at all costs, since they may not sustain all forms of innovation. Second, the changes in the institutional context of public-private partnerships in research which have been implemented between 2004 and 2008 have yet to prove effective in sustaining the innovation impact of cooperation.

Keywords: Public/private research partnerships; University/industry linkages; Innovativeness; Heckit procedure with endogenous regressors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (91)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733312001515
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Cooperation with public research institutions and success in innovation: Evidence from France and Germany (2010)
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:eee:respol:v:42:y:2013:i:1:p:149-166

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2012.06.002

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().