Medium-term regional effect of Science and Technology Parks: a staggered difference-in-difference approach

The interest in regional innovation policies has increased in recent years. Science and Technology Parks (STPs) are one of the most widespread regional innovation policies worldwide. They are considered a catalyst for regional innovation because they constitute a source of knowledge spillovers and a mechanism for knowledge transfer. The aim of this work is to evaluate the effect of the adoption of the STP policy on regional innovation performance. To this end, we build a provincial dataset for Spain covering 37 years and implement a difference-in-differences approach taking advantage of the staggered adoption of the STP policy and the fact that some provinces do not have an STP yet. The main results show that STPs increase provincial patents by 49.8% in years 6-10 after the adoption of the policy and by 79.7% in years 11-15.This result is robust to different assumptions and methodological choices. In addition, we find that the increase in patents does not come at the cost of lower patent quality, that STPs perform similarly in more or less advanced provinces, and that approximately 57% of the effect comes through STP spillovers.