Bartolomé Marco Lajara, Eduardo Sánchez García (p), Esther Poveda Pareja, Javier Martínez Falcó

Tania Fernández García

The current high degree of uncertainty and dynamism forces companies to make constant efforts to improve or, at least, maintain their relative competitive position in the markets. In this context, although globalisation predicted a decrease in the strategic importance of business location, the empirical evidence seems to indicate that it has increased, especially in recent years. This paper analyses in depth the effects of business location in specialised environments on social capital and interorganisational cooperation, as well as the impact of these factors on the innovative performance of firms. This study has been carried out on the electricity supply sector. After calculating the agglomeration coefficient in each of the 50 Spanish provinces, using secondary data, the research hypotheses have been tested using the second-generation multivariate partial least squares (PLS-SEM) technique. The results provide empirical evidence of the existence of a positive and significant relationship between industrial agglomeration in territorial clusters and the innovative performance of firms. In addition, it is confirmed that the social capital of firms and their degree of cooperation with entities in their environment partially mediate this relationship. On this basis, it is concluded that business location in specialised environments is of strategic importance for companies. Likewise, organisations should be aware of the importance of building a relational network formed by valuable agents and make efforts to effectively establish cooperation agreements aimed at promoting the achievement of business objectives.

Korneliusz Pylak (p)

Eduardo Sánchez García

See extended abstract.

A small extract of the abstract:
The challenge of satisfactory knowledge diffusion is compounded by the increasing complexity of knowledge (Mewes & Broekel, 2020), as has been observed since at least the 19th century (Balland et al., 2020). In fact, it is the increasing number, intensity and uniqueness of knowledge combinations (Broekel, 2019) that causes difficulties for companies to assimilate, process and exploit the knowledge created in value chains or surrounding areas (Yayavaram & Chen, 2015). This process is likely to intensify since there is a constant complexification of knowledge without sufficient support from human resources towards the acquisition of adequate capacity for assimilating and recombining knowledge components.

If, therefore, knowledge is indispensable for economic growth, its spatial scarcity will result in uneven growth in the incomes of companies and consequently of workers and owners. This will continue to be the case until knowledge becomes too complex, as is increasingly evident in developed countries. Despite the observed significant increase in the level of education and R&D intensity, faster economic growth has been increasingly less visible. This can be explained by the level of complexity of technology, which makes passive learning more difficult and increases expenditure on R&D and education, thus causing income growth to decline (Pintea & Thompson, 2007b).

These extremely complex processes of knowledge-based economic development have so far not been studied at the micro scale, i.e., spatially located enterprises. While differences in development levels have been studied in detail albeit at the level of regions or whole cities and their surrounding areas, within cities these processes still remain a mystery. In this study, we seek to explain the impact of emerging innovations on the level of income inequality inside 18 Polish provincial cities. We also consider the volatile impact of knowledge complexity on income inequalities. Deriving possible mechanisms of knowledge diffusion from the above theoretical considerations, we seek to test two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1. Knowledge sources increase income in their vicinity to a greater extent than outside them, contributing to income inequality regardless of the level of entrepreneurship.
Hypothesis 2. Knowledge complexity from a certain threshold contributes to a relative reduction in the income of knowledge sources and thus a slower increase in income inequality, indicating the inverted-U shape of this relationship.

Tania Fernández García (p), Diana Gutiérrez Posada, André Carrascal Incera

Korneliusz Pylak

It is almost universally accepted that technological change and other kind of innovation are the most important sources of productivity growth and well-being (Edquist, 1996).
The objective of this article is to analyze if R&D investments has long run effects on Spanish regions productivity. In this analysis we distinguish between public and private investment and also, we observe if the results vary depending on whether the region is more or less developed. In addition to controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors, such us human capital, density, territories level of education, among others, we include an interaction term which permit us to shape the effect of initial investment in R&D through time, being able to observe if R&D investments has long run effect on region´s productivity. Results have been obtained from 45 estimates in which a “Fix Effects Panel Model” has been employed in each case. Errors have been clustered by regions to control for a possible spatial dependence. Results are clear. Initial R&D investment has long-run effect on productivity regardless of the sector or kind of regions that executes the investment. Later investment has less impact on regions productivity. Also, it is observed that the effect of the investment in R&D is not homogeneous throughout the territories. Specifically, investment in R&D generates a greater impact on most developed regions. In line with recent literature, we observe that less developed regions could have a lower capacity to absorb invested resources due to their own socioeconomic circumstances.
"see extended abstract"