Suelene Mascarini

Looking at both sides: how specific characteristics of academic research groups and firms affect the geographical distance of university–industry linkages

This paper examines factors that affect the geographical distance of university–industry linkages by analysing specific characteristics of both sides of the collaboration – firms and universities. Previous studies have provided important evidence related to this issue; however, they have used data from either firms or universities. Therefore, this paper contributes to existing research on this issue by using information on both collaboration partners. For this purpose, data from the Directory of Research Groups in Brazil are used to estimate an empirical model. The main results indicate that firms with higher absorptive capacity and larger firms tend to collaborate with research groups that are more geographically distant. Further, on the university side, high-performance and larger research groups tend to attract firms that are more geographically distant as collaboration partners. Long-distance collaborations therefore usually occur when firms require high absorptive capacity and when they cannot find high-quality local universities.

An analysis of the effects of the characteristics of research groups on their interactions with firms

The main aim of this paper is to analyse how the characteristics of academic research groups affect their interactions with firms. Using data from a survey conducted in Brazilian research groups, an empirical model was estimated to evaluate how the characteristics of the research groups impact their interactions with firms. Main results show that research groups with higher academic performance, larger research groups and groups affiliated with larger departments tend to present higher numbers of interactions. Furthermore, engineering and agricultural sciences research groups interact more. Given these findings, the main contribution of the paper is that it furthers understanding of the factors that shape university–industry linkages and how characteristics of research groups affect interactions.