The Role of Space in the Creation of Knowledge in Austria. An Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis

• Main Authors: Fischer, Manfred M., Fröhlich, Josef, Gassler, Helmut, Varga, Attila
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: WU Vienna University of Economics and Business 2001
• Online Access: http://epub.wu.ac.at/4237/1/WGI_DP_7601.pdf

The paper makes a modest attempt to shed some light on the role of space in the creation of technological knowledge in Austria. The study is exploratory rather than explanatory in nature and based on descriptive techniques such as Moran¿s I test for spatial autocorrelation and the Moran scatterplot. Clusters of the knowledge ¿output¿ [measured in terms of patent counts] are compared with spatial concentration patterns of two input measures of knowledge production: private R&D and academic research. In addition, employment in manufacturing is utilised to capture agglomeration economies. The analysis is based on data aggregated for two digit SIC industries and at the level of Austrian political districts. It explores the extent to which knowledge spillovers are mediated by spatial proximity in Austria. A time-space comparison makes it possible to study whether divergence or convergence processes in knowledge creation have occurred in the past two decades. As in the case of any exploratory data analysis, the findings need to be treated with caution and should be viewed only as an initial pre-modelling stage in the enterprise. Future research activities will be devoted to further exploring the issue of local university knowledge spillovers within a refined production framework (see Griliches 1979). (authors' abstract) === Series: Discussion Papers of the Institute for Economic Geography and GIScience