Main research interest: service activities, in particular innovation in services

1

• Main research interest service activities, in
  particular innovation in services
• Motivation services have traditionally been
  ignored in the innovation domain and regarded as
  supplier-dominated activities. But recent
  studies demonstrate that some services (in
  particular what are called knowledge-intensive
  services, KIS) play a key role in innovation

2

• Different ways employed to date for studying the
  role of services in innovation
• Input-output techniques (forward and backward
  linkages, input-output models)
• Regression analysis (OLS)
• Multivariate analysis (factor analysis, cluster
  analysis)
• But all were applied on a national basis

3

• Many reasons to move from countries to regions,
  among others
• One of the major characteristics of services is
  co-production, that is to say, many services
  require face to face contact.
• A great part of the knowledge diffused by
  services is of a tacit nature, therefore, it is
  better transmitted at short distances.

4

• Spatial econometrics can be a good tool for
  analysing the role of services at a regional
  level and contribute to answer some questions
• Do services, and more concretely KIS, show some
  pattern of location? (it is widely known that a
  great share of KIS concentrate in capital cities
  in all European countries)
• Is there a direct relationship between the
  innovation performance of a region and the
  quantity/quality of the KIS provided in the
  region? (most innovative regions show high
  participations of KIS in employment )

5

• Different studies examined the relationship
  between the location of industries and the
  innovative performance at the regional level but
  
• Those that employed spatial econometrics focused
  on manufacturing industries (Moreno, Paci and
  Usai (2003) estimated a knowledge production
  function)
• Those that study service activities do not employ
  spatial econometrics (for example, Drejer and
  Vinding(2003) estimated a latent class model
  using firm-level data )

6

• Two main questions to analyse
• The existence of patterns in the location of
  KIS
• The relationship between regional innovation
  performance and location of KIS
• How to do it?
• By including in previous models a variable
  referring to KIS?
• By elaborating our own model? Of what kind?