Innovation, R&D Cooperation, and the Geography of Regional Labor Acquisition

Jaakko Simonen and Philip McCann
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Jaakko Simonen: University of Oulu
Philip McCann: University of Waikato

Chapter 11. in Time and Space in Economics, 2007, pp 205-225 from Springer

Abstract: Summary This chapter considers the role played by geography in the promotion of innovation. In order to examine these issues, we employ empirical data from Finland to test the extent to which the variety and nature of face-to-face contacts affects the innovation performance of the firm. In addition, we also control for the geographical mobility of the labor employed by the firm. This allows us to identify the different roles which the geography of knowledge spillovers and exchanges and the geography of labor markets play in the innovation process. Our findings here suggest that local face-to-face contact is an essential feature of innovation process. Moreover, our results concerning the importance of the variety of R&D relations also provide support for this argument. This is not to say, however, that the evidence unambiguously supports agglomeration-innovation arguments. The reason is that our labor market results point to a rather different conclusion. In particular, having controlled for the types of R&D cooperation relations which a firm exhibits, the finding that neither local labor acquisition nor local population density are related to innovation casts doubt on some of the agglomeration-innovation theories stressing the importance of local labor-market skills.

Keywords: Innovation; R&D Cooperation; Labor acquisition; High technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1007/978-4-431-45978-1_11

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