In recent decades the contribution made by higher education institutions to regional development has attracted increasing attention. Considering the university as an economic agent with its own budget and expenditure, then the activities it engages in, as well as those of the groups from which...

Many regional governments in developed countries design programs to improve the competitiveness of local firms. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of public programs whose aim is to enhance the performance of firms located in Catalonia (Spain). We compare the performance of publicly...

Measuring productive efficiency provides information on the likely effects of regulatory reform. We present a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) of a sample of 38 vehicle inspection units under a concession regime, between the years 2000 and 2004. The differences in efficiency scores show the...

The concept of innovation has been a constant worry for industrial sectors characterised by mature technology and by the loss of competitiveness associated to it. The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of innovation on the competitive position of the Spanish textile and clothing...

This paper empirically analyzes the economies of scale and economies of scope in the production of research and technology transfer outputs in the Spanish public university system. We employ the flexible fixed quadratic cost (FFQC) function which relates the total university R&D expenditure with...

The challenges posed by globalization have led to a rapid increase in the demand for higher education and, at the same time, many countries are earmarking more resources and efforts to foster their population's skills level and knowledge. Nowadays higher education is playing a crucial role in...

In this paper we empirically analyze the effects of collaboration in innovation with universities on the firm's innovative performance. Using data from the Technological Innovation Panel dataset (PITEC for its acronym in Spanish) we have constructed a database of 4643 innovative firms in Spain,...

Many regional governments in developed countries design programs to improve the competitiveness of local firms. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of public programs whose aim is to enhance the performance of firms located in Catalonia (Spain). We compare the performance of publicly...

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of regional R&D public programs in Catalonia (Spain) with a two-stage procedure. Firstly, we compare the performance of publicly subsidised companies (treated) with that of similar, but unsubsidised companies (non-treated). We use the Propensity Score...

Measuring productive efficiency provides information on the likely effects of regulatory reform. We present a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) of a sample of 38 vehicle inspection units under a concession regime with a homogeneous level of quality, which is enforced by a regional regulator,...