R&D Policy and Technological Trajectories of Regions: Evidence from the EU Framework Programmes

Wolf-Hendrik Uhlbach, Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Thomas Scherngell
2019 Zenodo  
Over the last years the issue of technological diversification gained importance for STI policies. This is especially true in the context of regions, as an important unit for STI policies. Much research was therefore dedicated to explore the drivers of diversification. An increasing body of evidence suggests that diversification is a highly path dependent process in which regions tend to diversify into technologies that to a large extent draw on knowledge and capabilities that are already
more » ... t in the region. This process is referred to related diversification. From a policy perspective the question arises which factors influence the capability for technological diversification and in particular whether and how public research and development (R&D) subsidies can be a positive impetus. Making use of regional participations in the EU Framework Programmes (FP) from the EUPRO database, it will therefore ask to what extent subsidization of certain technologies will promote diversification. Secondly it will investigate to what extent subsidization can allow regions to diversify into less related technologies. After establishing a convergence between FP projects and technology fields of patents, we explore the relationship between diversification and public funded projects by means of a fixed-effects linear probability model. Results indicate statistically positive effects of participation in FP projects and a decrease in the deferring importance of relatedness with increasing number of participations. Despite their statistical significance, the marginal effects are small.
doi:10.5281/zenodo.2559443 fatcat:apd44bxqvzguxia7bzthidddqi