Lecture in the Spatial Warsaw Seminar Series – June 4
We cordially invite you to attend the upcoming seminar featuring researchers from the University of Oviedo, who are also affiliated with the REGIOlab research group – Dr Tania Fernández García and Dr Juan Andres Piedra Peña.
The speakers will present a study entitled "Does higher R&D investment promote better efficiency in European regions?".
The event will begin at 15:00 in Room F, at the Faculty of Economic Sciences. It will also be possible to attend the seminar online via the Zoom platform.
Link to the meeting: https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/94681935483?pwd=fAoCx14lLr4BuW5KZsXZdLabQNd2lt.1
[Meeting ID: 946 8193 5483
Passcode: 590491]
We warmly encourage you to review the abstract of the presentation provided below.
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The economic literature has consistently found that research and development (R&D) expenditure is a key factor for boosting regional economic development. Accordingly, all European regions have invested substantial resources to R&D over the last decades, albeit with differing intensities. However, spatial economic disparities persist, resulting in a general lack of convergence. This contradictory scenario leads us to question the capacity of European regions to optimize their R&D investment to maximize innovation. In light of this, this study aims to analyse the European regional efficiency of R&D in terms of patent applications. To tackle our question, we make use of stochastic frontier (SF) models to measure the efficiency of each European region in the use of R&D expenditures. We model a production function with patent applications as output; while our inputs are the capital stock, the population employed in science and technology, and contemporary investment in R&D. In addition, to model inefficiency, we include environmental variables such as sectoral specialization, population density, and area type. We gather a novel panel database for 193 European NUTS2 regions for the period 2008-2020. Our results reveal significant differences in R&D efficiency across European regions, and we also find that higher R&D investment does not guarantee efficient use of resources.