The Network Effects of Regional R&D Collaboration Policy

Adopting a counterfactual approach to the evaluation of an R&D collaboration policy, carried out on a regional scale, we investigate different types of persistent network effects, namely persistence, breadth, composition, and intensification. Our findings reveal that the R&D collaboration policy was able to generate a persistent change in the networking behaviour of participating firms (persistence effect), stimulating in particular collaborations with universities. Network effects were greater for firms that, prior to the policy intervention, were already accustomed to collaborating, than for more stand-alone firms. With respect to the former firms, we also find a composition effect, which implies a change in the type of partners in innovation-related activities.