Desperately seeking spillovers? Increasing returns, industrial organization and the location of new entrants in geographic and technological space *

Barak S. Aharonson, Joel A. C. Baum and Maryann P. Feldman

Industrial and Corporate Change, 2007, vol. 16, issue 1, 89-130

Abstract: Using detailed data on Canadian biotechnology firms during the 1990s, we explore the geographic scope of knowledge spillovers and the balance spillover-seeking and expropriation-avoidance in entrants’ locations. Our findings indicate that knowledge spillovers are highly localized, with entrants attracted to incumbents’ R&D employees and spending within 500 m, but not further. We also find that two local contextual factors enhance the tendency toward spillover seeking. One is increasing returns to positive information externalities that accompany concentrations of technologically similar firms. The other is the entrepreneurial and open industrial organization that arises when incumbents with direct ties to universities concentrate geographically. Our findings provide empirical evidence of forces promoting geographically concentrated and technologically specialized industrial micro-clusters, as well as factors reinforcing the significance of co-location for the creation of new knowledge. Copyright 2007 , Oxford University Press.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtl034 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:indcch:v:16:y:2007:i:1:p:89-130

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial and Corporate Change is currently edited by Josef Chytry

More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().