University-educated Labor, R&D and Regional Export Performance

The main purpose of the study in this paper is to establish to what extent accessibility to R&D and university-educated labor can explain regional export performance. This is done by estimating knowledge production functions, with total export value and number of high-valued exports in Swedish municipalities from 1997 to 1999 as outputs. The results in the paper indicate that accessibility to university-educated labor has the greatest positive effects. The value of exported products is mainly affected by local accessibility to university-educated labor (and company R&D). The intra- and inter-regional accessibilities play a more important role when the number of high-valued export products in Swedish municipalities is the output.