Scientific Papers

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES


© CSR, 2008-2019
ISSN: 2306-3483 (Online), 2071-8330 (Print)

2.8
2019CiteScore
 
83nd percentile
Powered by  Scopus



Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)


Strike Plagiarism

Partners

Innovation performance and R&D expenditures in Western European regions: Divergence or convergence?

Vol. 11, No 1, 2018

 

Pavel Bednář

 

Department of Regional Development Public Administration and Law, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tomas Bata University in Zlín

Czech Republic 

bednar@fame.utb.cz

 

 

Innovation performance and R&D expenditures in Western European regions: Divergence or convergence?

 

Martina Halásková

 

Department of Public Economics, Faculty of Economics, VŠB-Technical University of Ostrava

Czech Republic 

martina.halaskova@vsb.cz


 

 

 

 

 

Abstract. Although Western Europe is a global leader in innovation activities among the OECD countries, these activities are not distributed evenly across NUTS 2 regions. Thus, the analysis of convergence or divergence related to innovation performance and R&D expenditures among Western European NUTS 2 regions is posed as the aim of this paper. Applying differential local version of spatial autocorrelation (LISA), difference-in-difference estimation the paper reveals the local variation of convergence and divergence and general spatial regime divergence in innovation performance and R&D expenditures within Western European NUTS 2 regions. Moreover, spatial lag cross-sectional regression provides support to the consideration of R&D expenditures as determinant for innovation performance along with the continuing divergence between most of Western and Southern European NUTS 2 regions and the others. Thus, the results confirm the stability in innovation performance and R&D expenditures in Western European NUTS 2 regions which could be the source of lagging behind not only other OECD countries but BRICS countries as well. On the regional level several NUTS 2 regions demonstrated the convergence dynamics, however, the general spatial divergence regime should lead to more actions regarding R&D polices under the EU programming period of 2014-2020.

 

 

Received: May, 2017

1st Revision: August, 2017

Accepted: November, 2017

 

DOI: 10.14254/2071-8330.2018/11-1/16

 

JEL ClassificationC21, C22, O30, O52, R12

KeywordsEuropean regions, expenditures, innovation, performance, research and development, spatial econometrics, Western Europe