City-REDI Seminar Series: The effectiveness of regional, national and EU support for innovation in the UK and Spain - Dr Bettina Becker, Aston University

City-REDI is delighted to invite you to our seminar series covering economics, economic geography, regional science, economic development, critical urbanism and urban policymaking. 

On the 12 February, Dr Bettina Becker from Aston University will deliver a seminar titled "The effectiveness of regional, national and EU support for innovation in the UK and Spain". 

Innovation policy aims to stimulate innovation and hence firm-level productivity and growth. Here, we use data from the national innovation panel surveys in the UK and Spain over the 2004 to 2012 period to explore the effectiveness of regional, national and EU innovation support in promoting the extent of innovation activity, its novelty, and market success. Allowing for potential selection effects, our results suggest that regionalised support is most influential in increasing the probability of undertaking both process and organisational innovations. For both the UK and Spain, national innovation support is associated with a higher probability of product or service innovation, and the degree of novelty of product or service innovations. In terms of innovation success (sales) we see a rather different pattern in the UK and Spain. In the UK only regionalised support is associated with increased innovative sales. In Spain, innovative sales are influenced by both regional, national and EU support measures. Our results, therefore, suggest that moves towards more centralised innovation policy in the UK since 2012 may have impacted negatively on firms’ ability to effectively commercialise new innovations.

This seminar will take place in Room G35, Chemical Engineering , University of Birmingham, 12 February 2019, 2 - 3pm.

You can find directions to the venue here.