Measuring the Knowledge Base of an Economy in Terms of Triple-Helix Relations Among 'Technology, Organization, and Territory.'

Elements of economic geography and scientometrics areused to operationalize the knowledge-based order of the economy, and anindicator of university-industry-government relations is developed. Dataconsisting of records on 1,131,668 firms in The Netherlands are used tovalidate the indicator. The data include information about each firm's location, industry sector,and size. Analysis of the data leads to four major hypotheses: first, theknowledge base of a regional economy is carried by medium-tech manufacturing;second, medium-tech manufacturing provides the backbone of the techno-economicstructure of the country; third, non-high-tech knowledge-intensive serviceshave an unfavorable effect on the territorial knowledge base of an economy; andfinally, The Netherlands is highly developed as a knowledge-intensive serviceeconomy. (SAA)