| Abstract: |
We evaluate the “Industrial Cluster Project†in Japan initiated by the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in 2001 in terms of
industry-university partnership (IUP), using original questionnaire data of
small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In this paper, we use the number of
patent applications as the measure of both the performance of the cluster
project and the industry-university partnership. Specifically, we test the
following hypotheses: 1) The SMEs that participate in the cluster project
apply for more patents than those that do not. 2) The effect of participation
in the cluster project on R&D productivity is enhanced by collaboration with
national universities within the same cluster area. We collected the data of
229 R&D intensive SMEs with up to 300 employees through a survey conducted in
2005. We employ negative binomial regression to test how participation in the
cluster project affects R&D productivity, controlling for firm characteristics
such as the number of employees, R&D intensity, the number of IUP projects,
the dummy variable for collaboration with national universities, the dummy
variable for joint R&D, the dummy variable for collaboration within cluster
regions, and industry dummies. Moreover, we estimate the treatment effect
model and the instrumental variables (IV) regression, considering the
possibility that participation in a cluster project is endogenous. We use firm
age as an instrumental variable because the cluster project aims at attracting
start-ups and young firms. The estimation results can be summarized as
follows. First, participation in the cluster projects alone does not affect
patent application. Rather, local firms collaborating with partners outside
the cluster show higher R&D productivity in general. Second, the cluster
participants apply for more patents when they collaborate with national
universities in the same cluster region. Further results reveal that, in this
case, the quality of applied patents measured by the average number of claims
does not significantly decrease, which is not in line with the argument that
cluster firms are subject to administrative pressures to show off the
performance of the cluster projects. |