L'impact sur l'innovation des économies d'agglomération

A huge range of economic literature is assessing the impact of agglomeration economies and the resulting knowledge externalities on industrial growth but neglects the intermediary link, namely knowledge creation capacity. This paper aims at filling the gap and studies the impact of urbanization and localization economies on the innovation performance of European regions. The investigation is based on a model that integrates different kinds of indicators aiming at capturing MARSHALL (1890)-ARROW (1962)-ROMER (1986) (MAR) and JACOBS (1969) externalities as well as sector and region specific variables. Tested on an extended sample of 153 European regions and 16 manufacturing sectors the results suggest that both kinds of externalities positively influence innovation although JACOBS externalities play are a crucial role for the innovation performance of metropolitan regions as well as high tech sectors. Classification JEL : R00, O18, O31