Understanding the diversity of cooperation on innovation across countries: multilevel evidence from Europe

Much has been written about innovation cooperation, but little research has been done to explain the national differences thereof. Using macro and micro evidence from the fourth Community Innovation Survey, we econometrically investigate the extent to which national framework conditions account for the propensity of firms to cooperate on innovation at home and abroad. The results indicate strong differences across countries in the latter. Firms operating in countries with less developed research infrastructure are shown to be more likely to cooperate with foreign partners, supporting the thesis that in this context the foreign linkages tend to be diasporic. The size and openness of the economy matters too. But the characteristics of firms that explain cooperation are not found to differ much across country. The results furthermore draw attention to the limitations of the existing micro data sets on innovation cooperation.