The role of government measures in university-industry collaboration for economic growth : a comparative study across levels of economic development

Nowadays, countries across the world aspire to increase their innovation for the common good. In this scope, and among others, the Triple Helix thesis emphasizes the role of collaboration between stakeholders from academia, industry and government to bring about effective innovation. Despite efforts to encourage university-industry (U-I) collaboration, bridging U-I barriers remains among the relevant economic and policy challenges. Among other aspects, it has been argued that the tendency to transfer tools from developed to underdeveloped countries hinders the capacity to obtain the full potential of U-I collaboration. As no empirical study validating such hypothesis has been identified, our study tests i/ whether U-I collaboration has a different impact on growth depending on the level of economic development, ii/ whether the impacts of specific governmental measures on U-I collaboration differ at different levels of economic development. Our findings suggest that up till now the potential of U-I collaboration remains underutilized across all levels of development. Our results show that diversified policy measures are relevant at different development levels. Furthermore, their relevance may also evolve over time. However, such factors as quality of research institutions and private R&D investments are critical across development levels and time.