Doctoral Dissertation Research: R&D Agglomeration

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This project will explore the prevalence of Silicon Valley-type clustering in industrial R&D activity in the U.S. By assembling a comprehensive and detailed dataset on U.S. R&D-performing establishments whose activities aggregated to the regional level, it will generate the first systematic, geographical mapping of U.S. industrial R&D. In addition to documenting the relative importance of Silicon Valley-style R&D agglomeration, the project will evaluate the determinants of the spatial distribution of R&D activity. Specifically, the project will empirically estimate what factors raise or lower the likelihood that a firm locates its R&D facilities in a particular region. The factors examined will include the presence of other establishments and firms performing R&D, the presence of the firm's manufacturing establishments, proximity to research universities, access to highly-educated and highly-specialized labor markets, and a region's intellectual property and tax policies. A specific focus of the project will be the relationship between R&D and manufacturing. Some types of R&D are not easily disassociated from the manufacturing process and this has led in these instances to the co-location of R&D and manufacturing. Because this project will document the evolution of the spatial distribution of R&D activities over the last three decades, it will shed light on how the off-shoring of the U.S. manufacturing industry has affected U.S. comparative advantage in R&D. Broader impacts: This project will generate the first, systematic geographical mapping of U.S. industrial R&D using the Census-NSF Survey of Industrial R&D (SIRD) and in its successor survey the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS). This project will increase our understanding of how R&D in the U.S. is organized, and in particular the importance of agglomeration in R&D, of co-location of R&D and manufacturing, of geographically-mediated spillovers among R&D establishments and between research universities and industrial R&D, and of intellectual property considerations. In addition, the results of this project will contribute to a wide range of policy discussions, including discussions of regional and national growth policy, industrial policy, intellectual property law, university research and its public funding, and the impact of higher education on the economy.