Adam Ploszaj (p), Agnieszka Olechnicka , Dorota Celinska-Janowicz

Marion Maisonobe

The paper investigates core-periphery relations in the network of international scientific collaboration and their implications for regional development processes and policies. We hypothesise that benefits from collaboration depend, ceteris paribus, on roles played by collaborators in the given collaboration. To capture the impact of various roles, we compare mean citation of collaborative papers in which authors from different countries perform a leading or a complementary role. The leading role can be attributed to scientists indicated as corresponding authors, while non-corresponding authors can be seen as complementary partners. Thus, we compare mean citations of internationally co-authored papers in which scholars affiliated in particular countries are either corresponding authors (“corresponding author paper”) or non-corresponding authors (“non-corresponding author paper”). The analysis is based on Web of Science data covering the period 2000-2013. The results of the study suggest that core countries seem to benefit most from international cooperation when they lead the research (i.e. when they play the role of a corresponding author), while peripheral countries benefit most from being led (i.e. when they play the role of a non-corresponding author). This can suggest that increasing international collaboration in science strengthens persistence of the spatial distribution of research excellence embedded in long-term historical processes.

See extended abstract.

Thomas Brenner (p)

Bastien Bernela

The interaction between public research, innovations and economic growth has been a topic in many papers. Usually it is assumed that scientific activity supports innovation activity, which leads to economic (employment) growth. This paper extends the existing studies in three ways. First, the various causal directions of the interaction between scientific activity, patent activity and employment dynamics are studied. A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) framework – the so-called VAR-LiNGAM approach – is used for the analysis. It is shown that scientific activity is often not the driver of innovation and growth but follows the dynamics of innovation and employment. Second, two-digit industries are studied separately so that differences between industries can be examined. It is shown that in the causal mechanisms strong differences exist between industries. All different causal chains are found for some of the industries. Third, while all existing approaches in this field use regions as observation unit, the approach taken here uses data on the level of municipalities and aggregates this data according to travel distances. Hence, the approach is less influenced by the so-called Modifiable Aerial Unit Problem (MAUP). The analysis is conducted for Germany for the years 2003 til 2012. 15 industries are distinguished and analysed separately. Impulse response functions are used to depict the findings.

Maria Adamakou (p), George Petrakos

Marion Maisonobe

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Teemu Makkonen (p), Timo Mitze

Marion Maisonobe

In response to the Ukraine crisis the EU has imposed restrictive measures against the Russian Federation from 2014 onward including travel bans, asset freezes and economic sanctions, which the Russian Federation has met with equal actions. The sanctions have been prolonged and likely to be extended further until the situation is resolved. This has, according to recent studies, led to a significant decline in exports between the EU and Russia slowing down GDP and employment growth in both sides of the dispute (EU and Russia). When it comes to the impacts of the sanctions on spatial knowledge flows in terms of international EU–Russia cooperation, earlier papers on this topic have postulated that -while the sanctions might have an indirect negative impact in the long run, the contemporary political tensions have not yet influenced scientific collaboration directly. Additionally, the overall increase in publishing outputs by Russian scholars indicates the emergence of a real domestic funding contribution to science in Russia, which can potentially signal a decreased need for collaboration in EU-funded research projects. However, the issue has remained unexplored empirically. Thus, we do not know whether these sanctions have an effect on the scientific collaboration between EU and Russian researchers or not. The issue is explored here empirically through recent data on EU–Russian scientific collaboration (via data on scientific co-publishing) and difference-in-difference analysis, where EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe serve as a comparison group to map the evolution of cross-country scientific collaboration over time. Our empirical analysis may thus shed new light on the role of political factors on the extent spatial knowledge flows as an essential research field in Regional Science.