UNIVERSITY – INDUSTRY COOPERATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: A COMMON PAST, A DIFFERENT FUTURE?

The aim of this paper is to map the position of the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)region for university – industry cooperation in research and development. (R&D) To meet this goal,we use the Global Competitiveness Index 2011 database and consider those indicators describing the knowledge production and the knowledge absorption potential of 142 participating countries. Based on a discriminant analysis, we classify the countries and synthesize their performances for the selected indicators. The results confirm our hypothesis regarding the heterogeneity of the CEE countries’ performances for university – industry cooperation and identifies the factors that explain the variations.