Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/123980 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
53rd Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "Regional Integration: Europe, the Mediterranean and the World Economy", 27-31 August 2013, Palermo, Italy
Publisher: 
European Regional Science Association (ERSA), Louvain-la-Neuve
Abstract: 
We investigate how variety affects the innovation output of a region. Borrowing arguments from theories of recombinant innovation, we expect that related variety will enhance innovation as related technologies are more easily recombined into a new technology. However, we also expect that unrelated variety enhances technological breakthroughs, since radical innovation often stems from connecting previously unrelated technologies opening up whole new functionalities and applications. Using patent data for US states in the period 1977-1999 and associated citation data, we find evidence for both hypotheses. Our study thus sheds a new and critical light on the related-variety hypothesis in economic geography.
Subjects: 
Keywords: recombinant innovation
regional innovation
superstar patents
technological variety
evolutionary economic geography
JEL: 
O31
R11
Document Type: 
Conference Paper

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