Presentation of paper

The determinants of innovation: analysis of the regional effects from the regionalized Community Innovation Survey

Speaker - Visiting Professor

Corinne Autant-Bernard - Université de Lyon

Abstract

Corinne Autant-Bernard (GATE-LSE), autant@univ-st-etienne.fr

Benoit Buisson (INSEE), benoit.buisson@insee.fr

Lionel Doisneau (INSEE), lionel.doisneau@insee.fr

Based on the recent regionalization of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) this paper studies the region-specific innovation processes in industry and services. The survey consists in a national sample and seven regional samples of "extension". It covers French firms with 10 to 249 employees, mono-regional or quasi-mono-regional. The set of extensions includes 3 965 firms which leads to a total sample of 11 639 observations. An enrichment of the CIS2008 through the crossing with other information sources is made in order to circumvent the difficulty of the CIS survey to provide information for non-innovative enterprises. A logit model is implemented to explain the probability of innovation by a combination of traditional factors such as size, sector, group membership, exports, but also high skilled labour.

Within this framework, the study analyzes the impact of location on the innovation process. It presents three main contributions. Firstly, the regional extensions of the CIS allows us to revisit the numerous studies on the determinants of innovation (see Mairesse and Mohnen 2010 for a review of the literature on these issues), by analyzing the specificity of the regional dimension in the innovation process. Secondly, compared to the studies of the geography of innovation, the use individual data allows investigating the specificities of each region and thus the reasons underlying the regional effects. Finally, whereas the analysis of spatial aspects of innovation is usually confined to the industry, the originality of the study comes from the comparison between industry, technology services and non-technology services.

The results point to the existence of specific effects in some regions for both industry and services. In addition, estimating our model separately for each region highlights that the determinants of innovation differ from one region to another. For instance, while some regions build their innovative capacities on small firms, other regions take advantage of exports or high skilled labour. The identification of such regional specificities is suggestive in terms of local public policies.

For more information: crenos@unica.it

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