Roderik Ponds

Do Regional and Non-regional Knowledge Flows Differ? An Empirical Study on Clustered Firms in the Dutch Life Sciences and Computing Services Industry

In the literature on innovation and geographical proximity, inter‐organizational knowledge flows are increasingly acknowledged to take place at multiple spatial levels. Furthermore, the knowledge flows within and between regions are assumed to have different characteristics. Until now, hardly any study has examined those latter assumptions empirically. This study aims to provide empirical insights by analysing whether there are differences in the characteristics of regional and non‐regional inter‐organizational knowledge flows in the Dutch computing services and life sciences industry. The results indeed show significant differences. Confirming the assumptions in the literature, regional knowledge flows are characterized by a higher number of face‐to‐face contacts, while the knowledge exchanged through non‐regional knowledge flows is more valuable. The relations between the duration and the social base of the knowledge flow and its spatial scale are less straightforward.

Employment from new firm formation in the Netherlands: Agglomeration economies and the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship

Within the recent literature on the geography of new firm formation, much attention is given to the role of regional knowledge sources based on the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship. At the same time, several other studies show the importance of agglomeration economies for new firm formation. The goal of this study is to assess the relative importance of these determinants for differences in the share of employment creation from new firms at the level of municipalities for the period of 1999–2006 in the Netherlands. It is found that the traditional drivers of new firm formation, such as economic growth and agglomeration effects, have a much stronger effect on new firm formation compared to measures of the regional knowledge base. Moreover, it is shown that when not correcting for the presence of agglomeration effects, the role of local knowledge resources is easily over-estimated, pointing to the dangers of misspecifications of models. The results imply that the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship should, at least for the Netherlands, not be exaggerated.

Death of distance in science? : a gravity approach to research collaboration

One of the major transitions in recent scientific research is the rise of network theory motivating a variety∈dexvariety of new research programmes in and across various disciplines. Economic geography∈dexgeography has been no exception. The work on networks in economic geography can be divided into two types of research. First, there are studies on inter-firm networks and their impact on firm performance. For a large part, such studies have been carried out in the context of geographical clusters, which are often characterised by strong network relations (Uzzi, 1997). A second approach, an example of which is presented below, concerns the study of inter-regional networks and their impact on regional growth. Here, the unit of analysis are territories, typically sub-national regions. The interest in this topic stems from Castells (1996) and others who have argued that regional growth increasingly depends on a region’s position in global networks rather than its specific local characteristics such as institutions, endowments and amenities (‘space of flows’ versus the ‘space of places’).