Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP13048
Authors: Andrés Rodríguez-Pose; Callum Wilkie
Abstract: Not all economically-disadvantaged – ‘less developed’ or ‘lagging’ – regions are the same. They are, however, often bundled together for the purposes of innovation policy design and implementation. This paper attempts to determine whether such bundling is warranted by conducting a regional level investigation for Canada, the United States, on the one hand, and Europe, on the other, to (a) identify the structural and socioeconomic factors that drive patenting in the less developed regions of North America and Europe, respectively; and (b) explore how these factors differ between the two contexts. The empirical analysis, estimated using a mixed-model approach, reveals that, while there are similarities between the drivers of innovation in North America’s and Europe’s lagging regions, a number of important differences between the two continents prevail. The analysis also indicates that the territorial processes of innovation in North America’s and Europe’s less developed regions are more similar to those of their more developed counterparts than to one another.
Keywords: innovation; lagging regions; R&D; patenting; Canada; Europe; United States
JEL Codes: R11; R12; O32; O33
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Higher education R&D expenditure (I23) | Regional patent generation (O36) |
| Skilled human capital (J24) | Regional patent intensity (O34) |
| Agglomeration of economic activity (R11) | Innovation (O35) |
| Business enterprise R&D investment (O32) | Innovative output (O36) |
| Interregional knowledge flows (O36) | Innovation (O35) |