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Pathways of Innovation: The I-District Effect Revisited

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Agglomeration and Firm Performance

Part of the book series: Advances in Spatial Science ((ADVSPATIAL))

Abstract

The I-district effect establishes the existence of dynamic efficiency in Marshallian industrial districts in the form of a positive innovative differential comparing to the average of the economy. The hypothesis has been empirically validated for the case of technological innovation using patent indicators. Empirical research has assumed that all types of patentable figures (utility models, national patents, EPO, WIPO) have the same weight regardless of its actual or expected market value, which may be questionable given the differences in coverage, protection and cost of each figure. In this article, we question the existence of the I-district effect when each patent is weighted by its expected potential value. As the I-district effect theory predicts, the relative differential effect is maintained even in the presence of the weighting, rejecting that the industrial district specializes only in low-quality patents. However, in this case, the primacy of industrial district as the most innovative local production system can be outpaced by other local production systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These four metropolitan areas are Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Bilbao. The metropolitan area of Valencia is classified as an ID.

  2. 2.

    The fact that the R&D expenditure of universities is concentrated in a few LPSs and that in the rest it is zero presents difficulties in expressing the variables in logarithms; this is the reason why we have opted to add it to the public sector expenditure.

  3. 3.

    The INE only offers the symmetric tables of the years 2000 and 2005, so we used the year 2000. When using a single table for all geographic areas, it is assumed that the inter-sector supplier-customer relationships are similar between LPSs.

  4. 4.

    The table of equivalences used is that published by the INE along with the SIOT.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament d’Estructura Econòmica, Facultat d’Economia, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain

    Rafael Boix

  2. Institut d’Estudis Regionals i Metropolitans de Barcelona, Plaça del Coneixement, Edifici MRA, planta 2, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus de Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

    Vittorio Galletto

  3. Dipartimento di Economia, Facoltà di Economia, Università degli Studi di Parma, Parma, Italy

    Fabio Sforzi

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  1. Rafael Boix
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  2. Vittorio Galletto
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Correspondence to Rafael Boix .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipto. Scienze Economiche, Marco Fanno, Università di Padova, Padova, Italy

    Fiorenza Belussi

  2. ESIC Business and Marketing School, Madrid, Spain

    Jose-Luis Hervas-Oliver

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Boix, R., Galletto, V., Sforzi, F. (2018). Pathways of Innovation: The I-District Effect Revisited. In: Belussi, F., Hervas-Oliver, JL. (eds) Agglomeration and Firm Performance. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90575-4_3

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