Matthias Duschl

Firm growth and the spatial impact of geolocated external factors: Empirical evidence for German manufacturing firms

In this paper the relationship between firm growth and external knowledge sources, such as related firms and universities, is studied. The spatial characteristics of these relationships are examined by geolocating firms into a more realistic relational space using travel time distances and using flexible distance decay function specifications. This approach properly accounts for growth relevant knowledge spillovers and allows for estimating their spatial range and functional form. Applying quantile regression techniques on a large sample of German manufacturing firms, we show that the impact of external factors substantially differ along firms’ size, type of knowledge source and growth level.

Firm Growth and the Spatial Impact of Geolocated External Factors

Summary This paper studies the relationship between firm growth and external factors. Externalities from related economic, public research and higher educational activities are traced back to specific locations in space. The spatial characteristics of their impact are examined within a distancebased, micro-founded approach. Applying quantile regression techniques on a large sample of German firms, we empirically disentangle the complex interplay between internal factors (firm size), external factors and their spatial extent. In particular, we find that the larger firms are, the more diverse are the activities they benefit from and that the geographical meaning of “nearby” depends on the kind of activity.

Joint R&D Subsidies, Related Variety, and Regional Innovation

Subsidies for research and development (R&D) are an important tool of public R&D policy, which motivates extensive scientific analyses and evaluations. This article adds to this literature by arguing that the effects of R&D subsidies go beyond the extension of organizations’ monetary resources invested into R&D. It is argued that collaboration induced by subsidized joint R&D projects yield significant effects that are missed in traditional analyses. An empirical study on the level of German labor market regions substantiates this claim, showing that collaborative R&D subsidies impact regions’ innovation growth when providing access to related variety and embedding regions into central positions in cross-regional knowledge networks.