Determinants of Regional Innovation in Russia: Are People or Capital More Important?

Stepan Zemtsov, Alexander Muradov (), Imogen Wade () and Vera Barinova
Additional contact information
Alexander Muradov: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology State University (Russian Federation)
Imogen Wade: Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russian Federation); University College London (UK)

Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), 2016, vol. 10, issue 2, 29-42

Abstract: Spending on innovation increased annually in the 2000s in Russia’s regions, but innovation productivity varies greatly between regions. In the current climate of sanctions between Russia and Western countries and limitations on international technology transfer, there is a growing need to analyse the factors influencing regional innovation. Previous empirical studies using a knowledge production function approach have found that the main factor of the growth of regional innovation is increasing spending on research and development (R&D). Our econometric analyses show that the quality of human capital, a product of the number of economically active urban citizens with a higher education (the so-called creative class) has the greatest influence on the number of potentially commercializable patents. Other significant factors were buying equipment, which indicates a high rate of wear and tear of Russian machinery, and spending on basic research. The ‘centre-periphery’ structure of Russia’s innovation system favours the migration of highly qualified researchers to leading regions, which weakens the potential of the ‘donor regions’. However, at the same time, we see significantly fewer limitations on knowledge spillovers in the form of patents and — in this case — proximity to the ‘centres’ is a positive factor.

Keywords: patenting level; human capital; knowledge spillovers; regions of the Russian Federation; knowledge production function; R&D; creative class (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O32 O33 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://foresight-journal.hse.ru/data/2016/07/07/1115797440/2-Wade-29-42.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Determinants of Regional Innovation in Russia: Are People or Capital More Important? (2016)
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:hig:fsight:v:10:y:2016:i:2:p:29-42

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015) from National Research University Higher School of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nataliya Gavrilicheva () and Mikhail Salazkin ().