Science and Technology Parks and their Heterogeneous Effect on Firm Innovation

Science and Technology Parks are one of the main innovation applied policies around the world. Their literature is mainly focused on estimating the park effect on firms located in. However, in spite of the interest of policy makers and academics, there are no conclusive results on their effects. Studies have widely used patent count as innovation indicator without taking into account the quality of innovation.

We explore whether this contrasting evidence is due to the evaluation of this policy has not been properly addressed. First, we use patent quality as innovation indicator by addressing the skewed patent value. Second, we deal with park effect as heterogeneous effect by moving away from the literature that approaches the park effect as a homogeneous effect without taking into account heterogeneity factors such as the characteristics of the park or of the firms located there.