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Firms and universities—do spillovers enhance firm’s performance?

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Abstract

This paper aims to assess if geographic proximity from universities enhances small firms’ performance, by means of knowledge spillovers. A sample of micro data is used on 390 manufacturing firms and 11 public universities in Portugal. Performance is measured by labour productivity. The estimation was made using OLS as well as Quantile Regression. Results seem to confirm that both domains of knowledge do produce distinct effects, but there is no evidence that a firm’s performance improves with the proximity to a university. Likewise, the quality of universities does not seem to influence the labour productivity of firms.

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Notes

  1. Traditionally, productivity is measured by the ratio between the gross value added and the number of hours worked; nevertheless, data on hours worked are not available.

  2. Alternative measures of “distance” considering the concept of accessibility (distance measured by time or by cost) were also tested. No significant differences were identified.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Escola de Economia e Gestão—Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057, Braga, Portugal

    Isabel M. Correia & Orlando Petiz

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  1. Isabel M. Correia
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  2. Orlando Petiz
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Correspondence to Isabel M. Correia.

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Correia, I.M., Petiz, O. Firms and universities—do spillovers enhance firm’s performance?. Int Entrep Manag J 3, 145–157 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-006-0033-9

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