Factors affecting inter-regional academic scientific collaboration within Europe: the role of economic distance

Abstract

This paper offers some insights into scientific collaboration (SC) at the regional level by drawing upon two lines of inquiry. The first involves examining the spatial patterns of university SC across the EU-15 (all countries belonging to the European Union between 1995 and 2004). The second consists of extending the current empirical analysis on regional SC collaboration by including the economic distance between regions in the model along with other variables suggested by the extant literature. The methodology relies on co-publications as a proxy for academic collaboration, and in order to test the relevance of economic distance for the intensity of collaboration between regions, we put forward a gravity equation. The descriptive results show that there are significant differences in the production of academic scientific papers between less-favoured regions and core regions. However, the intensity of collaboration is similar in both types of regions. Our econometric findings suggest that differences in scientific resources (as measured by R&D expenditure) between regions are relevant in explaining academic scientific collaborations, while distance in the level of development (as measured by per capita GDP) does not appear to play any significant role. Nevertheless, other variables in the analysis, including geographical distance, specialization and cultural factors, do yield significant estimated coefficients, and this is consistent with the previous literature on regional SC.

Proximity dimensions and scientific collaboration among academic institutions in Europe: The closer, the better?

“…Drawing upon this line of research, Boschma (2005), from a theoretical point of view, identified five kinds of proximities: geographical, cognitive, institutional, organizational, and social. Recent research has also highlighted the relevance of economic differences as an explanatory factor of SC (Acosta et al, 2011a;Hwang, 2008;Sonnenwald, 2007).…”

“…Differences in economic resources among geographic areas (economic distance) may determine the spatial patterns in SC, as derived from the centre-periphery hypothesis (Schott, 1998;Schubert and Sooryamoorthy, 2010) applied to research collaboration (Acosta et al, 2011a). According to this literature, scientists in peripheral countries are willing to collaborate with core countries to gain access to resources, while core areas seeking complementarities (Hwang, 2008;Sonnenwald, 2007).…”

“…According to this literature, scientists in peripheral countries are willing to collaborate with core countries to gain access to resources, while core areas seeking complementarities (Hwang, 2008;Sonnenwald, 2007). Acosta et al (2011a) using data on a sample of co-authored papers among regions in EU-15, put forward a gravity equation that includes economic distance. Their results showed that having similar levels of resources devoted to R&D play a positive role in facilitating SC.…”

“…Firstly, following Boschma (2005), this paper mainly aims to examine the effect of geographical, cognitive, institutional, organizational and social distance on SC among academic institutions. Besides, we also analyse the role of economic distance, which has recently raised the interest of some authors (Acosta et al, 2011a;Hwang, 2008;Sonnenwald, 2007), inspired by the centre-periphery hypothesis. Secondly, we focus on SC at university-level, in which knowledge creation and diffusion is the primary mission.…”

Regional Scientific Production and Specialization in Europe: The Role of HERD

“…The main channel for spillovers in research is through collaboration, where several factors such as specialization, sharing the same language or culture, or the economic distance can promote or hinder collaboration (Acosta et al, 2011b), but not the fact that they share a border. Below we discuss the empirical results in detail and perform additional econometric robustness checks.…”