Inter-European Regional Dispersion of Corporate Research Activity in Information and Communications Technology: The Case of German,Italian and UK Regions

The increased geographical dispersion of corporate research seems to emphasize the significance of the local dimension over the pace of technological development. However, although a large number of studies have focused on intra-border analysis in the US, the European regional dimension has been explored only recently due to the lack of data availability.This paper investigates the regional dispersion of European-owned ICT research activity across German, Italian and UK regions.The empirical results suggest that locally embedded value added and the subsequent localised knowledge spillovers stemming from it are promoting spatial agglomeration economies, which generate competitive corporate advantage based on untraded externalities.