María Jesús Rodríguez-Gulías

Science and technology parks were conceived to promote firm performance and innovation, and they have become increasingly important in local and regional development policies. However, there are few empirical studies on their effectiveness as drivers of firm innovation, and existing studies have also reported mixed results, which could be due to small sample sizes and biases in the selection of control samples. To overcome these constraints, we analyse a sample of 553 firms located in parks and a control sample of firms located outside, selected through propensity score matching, which is a novel contribution to the literature. Portugal, a lower‐middle income country representative of the European periphery, is used as case study. The results indicate that location in parks positively and significantly affects having some patent activity, as well as the number of patents filed, but no significant effect is found for patents granted.

One of the main objectives of science and technology parks (STPs) is to contribute to regional development through the creation of skilled jobs in the territory where they are located. However, despite the expansion of these infrastructures over the last decades and the governmental support they receive, there is very little empirical evidence on how these infrastructures affect the employment growth of the firms located there. The aim of this paper is to examine whether the location in STPs has positive effects on employment growth at the firm level. We analysed a sample of 553 Portuguese firms located on STPs and a control group of the same size of comparable firms located outside STPs, applying a dynamic panel data model methodology. The empirical evidence does not allow to prove that location in STPs has positive effects on employment growth, which raises the need to rethink the policies supporting these parks.

The idiosyncrasies of family firms (FFs) may enable or hamper their ability to exploit the region’s knowledge spillovers. To the date, this issue has not been addressed by the literature. The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to explore whether FF nature influences on firm innovative performance by acknowledging the fact that firm innovation happens in a certain location where firms are exposed to knowledge spillovers; and secondly, to analyse whether FF management plays a moderating role in the effects of regional knowledge spillovers on innovative outcomes. We used multilevel modelling and panel data methodology in a sample of 1191 Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 2009–2016. By applying multilevel analysis and panel data methods, the results indicate that being part of a family group increases innovative performance, and this effect seems to be even more important in regions with low technological or human capital resources.

RESUMO O papel dos parques de ciência e tecnologia (PCT) no desenvolvimento econômico, especialmente no crescimento de empresas, tem merecido particular atenção por parte das políticas públicas dos diferentes países. Porém, na literatura não existe consenso sobre se a localização nesses parques tem efeitos positivos no crescimento em vendas das empresas. O objetivo deste artigo é alargar a discussão acerca dos efeitos dos PCT, proporcionando novas evidências empíricas. Para isso, utilizamos uma amostra de 553 firmas portuguesas localizadas nessas infraestruturas e uma amostra de controle de idêntica dimensão. O método de emparelhamento utilizado é o Propensity Score Matching (PSM), e a análise é efetuada com recurso ao método generalizado dos momentos em dados em painel dinâmico. A análise empírica não permite provar qualquer efeito estatisticamente significativo da localização das firmas em PCT sobre o seu crescimento em vendas.

The role of science and technology parks (STPs) in economic development, and in particular in the growth of the firms, has received considerable attention from government policies in different countries. However, there is no consensus in the literature on whether the location in these parks has positive effects on firms’ sales growth. This paper aims to extend the discussion on the effects of STPs by providing new empirical evidence. With this purpose, we use a sample of 553 Portuguese companies located in these infrastructures and a control sample of the same size. We use the Propensity Score Matching Procedure to match the samples and the analysis is carried out by the Generalized Method of Moments in dynamic panel data. The empirical analysis does not prove any statistically significant effect of the location of the firms in science and technology parks on their growth in sales.

Previous research on the firm growth of the university spin‐offs (USOs) and its drivers yields inconclusive results. Recently, the literature on the high‐growth firms (HGFs) has relied on regression quantile methods to study how the effects of growth determinants may differ along the firm growth distribution. This study builds a bridge between the two strands of literature by exploring how firm‐specific characteristics may shape sales and employment growth patterns of USOs. To this end, it applies panel data quantile regression models in a sample of 531 Spanish USOs over the period of 2001–2013. The results show that the growth drivers not only differ between employment growth and sales growth but also along the growth distributions.