Martina Del Molin (p), Claudio Di Berardino, Adriana Carolina Pinate

Maria Abreu

This paper aims at understanding the determinants of the Italian Ph.D. mobility and occupational outcomes, a category of high skilled individual which has been largely ignored by the existing literature. Investigating the mobility patterns and the occupational outcomes of Ph.D. graduates is relevant for different reasons. From a policy perspective, recent evidences has shown how for some cohorts it is increasingly hard to find an academic job, which leads to an imbalance between demand and supply (Mewburn et al, 2020; Ballarino and Colombo, 2010) and, at the same time, because recently academia is not the unique reference labor market for Ph.D. holders who started to work also in the private sector (Ermini et al., 2017). Moreover, doctoral students are expected to produce more general and transferable skills in the place where they work and live favoring.
To achieve this research objective, we use the latest edition of the Survey on the Professional Placement of Ph.Ds. conducted by the ISTAT (2018) referring to 2014 Ph.D. graduates from all the Italian universities. It provides 7800 observations, representative at the level of the region of study, residence and work (NUST2). Our econometric analysis consists of an initial investigation of their spatial distribution and a subsequent multilevel analysis by matching the survey with regional-level data.
With respect to the extant literature, three are the contributions of this research. First, we focus on Ph.D. holders, a skilled human capital category under investigated by the empirical literature. Second, we implemented a taxonomy of mobile graduates by distinguishing Ph.D. into five categories (repeat, return, university stayer, late migrant and non-migrant). Third, we also consider their educational background, separating the analysis of their effects associated their labor market (employed in public institutions or private companies).
The result of the study lead to relevant implications, both for scholars and policy makers. Concerning the literature, we advance the relatively scantly investigated topic of PhD holder mobility and their placement in the labor market in Italy. Second, understanding their mobility and their occupational outcomes it’s of paramount importance in Italy, particularly in relation with the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). Third, understanding the occupational outcome is also important for universities to design Ph.D. courses aligned with the job market requirements.

Shengjun Zhu (p)

Martina Dal Molin

The university-industry collaboration is an essential engine of the regional innovation system and can significantly drives regional economic growth. The realization of intellectual collaboration, especially firms absorbing academic knowledge, is heavily dependent on the transmission of tacit knowledge by face-to-face contact. Though economic geographers have long emphasized the importance of face-to-face contact, its effect is rarely measured directly. This paper contributes to this end by utilizing the mobile signaling data, and tries to estimate and explain the marginal effect of face-to-face contact on the co-patenting behavior between firms and universities in Beijing. We conclude that face-to-face contact indeed increases the productivity of university-industry collaboration, specifically in the idea-formation period. In addition, we detect the ambiguity of geographical proximity in explaining university-industry collaboration patterns. For policy consideration, we contend that innovation policy should pay enough attention to reinforcing the university-industry nexus. The removal of interaction barrier between firms and universities is crucial and it can be achieved either by forming direct contact channels or leveraging the spatial spillover effect of personal interaction.

Bianca Biagi, Laura Ciucci (p), Claudio Detotto, Manuela Pulina

Shengjun Zhu

This paper focuses on Higher Education Institutes’ (HEIs) strategic behaviour. It expands the literature by exploring the role of study programmes strategies on freshers’ dynamics, controlling for internal and external supply factors. The work addresses three research questions: 1) Are diversification and divergence of study programmes good strategies to increase demand? Do these effects change with 2) the internal characteristics and 3) the external characteristics of universities? A panel data analysis (2012-2019, Italy) confirms that HEIs converge towards the typical national specialisation. The Italian HEIs’ market structure is also unveiled as a novel finding. Diversification is successful for small/peripheral universities, while divergence is rewarding in the presence of local competitors. Indeed, a monopolistic competition mechanism characterizes the Italian university system.

Maria Abreu (p), Vadim Grinevich (p)

Laura Ciucci

We explore how regional entrepreneurship ecosystems enable or constrain the entrepreneurial activities of university graduates, with a focus on ‘missing’ entrepreneurs with non-mainstream characteristics who are currently underrepresented. We argue that today’s University, with its emphasis on equality, diversity, and inclusivity, combined with its social mobility and civic missions, is an important vehicle for enabling this ‘missing’ entrepreneurship and its associated local and regional economic impacts. Our analysis is based on 15 years of data from the UK’s Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey (2002-2017), and two waves of the more recent Graduate Outcomes survey (2017-2019), which provide detailed micro data on university graduates. We combine this with university-level data on policies and engagement with external organisations, as well as information on staff characteristics and financial investment in knowledge-exchange activities. Our results indicate that regional entrepreneurship ecosystems centred around universities are critical drivers of entrepreneurship among non-conventional graduate entrepreneurs.