Firm Knowledge, Neighborhood Diversity and Innovation

Sofia Wixe

No 360, Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation from Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

Abstract: This paper tests the importance of firm level knowledge and neighborhood diversity, as a source for localized knowledge spillovers, on firms propensity to innovate. Diversity is measured in terms of industries as well as employee education and occupation, of which the results show a positive neighborhood effect from diversity in education. In addition, an added positive effect from neighborhood diversity in education is found for firms with a larger share of highly educated employees, which points to the importance of absorptive capacity. However, firm characteristics, such as the knowledge of the own employees, provide to be the strongest determinants for the innovativeness of firms.

Keywords: Knowledge; neighborhood diversity; education; skills; innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J24 O31 R32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2014-04-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-ger, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-lma, nep-sbm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0360

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