• services
• R&D cooperation
• innovation

This thesis is composed by three chapters dealing with the determinants of R&D
cooperation in the manufacturing and the service sectors. The first chapter provides
a literature review on the factors that mainly affect firms' propensity to
engage in R&D cooperation and highlights points which literature has not still
achieved consistent results.
Moving on these points, the second chapter provides the analysis of R&D cooperation
determinants in the Italian manufacturing and service sectors using the
fourth Community Innovation Survey data (2002-2004). This analysis shows some
important differences, between the manufacturing and the service sectors, in the
cooperative behaviour of Italian firms. First, the appropriability of innovation results
increases the probability of cooperation but this effect is much more evident
in the manufacturing sector than in the services. Second, subsidies for innovation
have the effect to increase the probability of cooperation in particular in the
services. Since this last results could have some important policy implications if
confirmed in other scenarios, the last part of the thesis try to understand if this
positive relationship between public funding and R&D cooperation is consistent
across countries and if it is particularly relevant in the service sector, as the analysis
of the Italian case would suggests. This analysis, in fact, should help policy
makers to acquire a better understanding of national innovative behaviours and
to develop policies that can shift firms' capabilities toward greater collaboration
and innovation activity.
The empirical analysis of this last chapter is performed using the third European
Community Innovation Surveys (1998-2000) for seven countries. Results show a
positive impact of subsidies for innovation on R&D cooperation. This impact is
often larger in the service sector than in the manufacturing one. However, the
most evidently emerging result is that innovation subsidies increase, in particular,
R&D cooperations between firms and universities or research institutes. This result
is consistent and highly significant for all the countries analyzed, thus leaving
room for policy implications.