University-Industry Collaboration in Biopharmaceutical Industry: The Italian Case

Abstract We investigate the determinants of University-Industry interactions in the biopharmaceutical in Italy, over the period 2004-2010. Because of the specificities of biopharmaceutical industry, we choose co-publishing as a proxy of University-Industry relations. By integrating different statistical sources, we construct a novel dataset of co-published articles containing measures of proximities; agglomeration; firms’ and universities’ characteristics. Following a consolidated methodology, we extend our dataset of effective U-I interactions, which activated a co-publication, with the set of potential U-I interactions which did not. The resulting dataset is used to estimate probabilistic models for the occurrence and intensity of University-Industry interaction. Our main findings confirm to a large extent predictions of the relevant literature. Namely: i) both geographical and organizational proximity increase the probability and the intensity of co-publications; ii) the proximity of a firm to other biopharmaceutical firms and universities attenuates the impact of geographical proximity on the probability of co-publishing; iii) there exists complementarity between organizational proximity and geographical proximity. A relevant and completely novel result is that firms’ and Universities’ size; composition of the academic staff as well as quality of academic research exert a significant impact on the intensity of co-publishing.