The impact of relational spillovers from joint research projects on knowledge creation across European regions

This paper investigates the impact of “relational” spillovers, arising from participation in European research networks, on knowledge creation across European regions. We use links in the EU Framework Programmes (from the Fourth to the Seventh) to weigh foreign R&D in order to construct a relational distance matrix across 257 European regions over the period 1995-2010. We then assess the impact of relational spillovers on regional patent applications controlling for local spatial spillovers. We find that relational spillovers matter for knowledge creation although spatial contiguity remains a crucial factor. We also find that spillovers are higher when regions with different levels of R&D participate in European networks.