R & D Cooperation between Firms and Universities Some

Using Community Innovation Survey data for Belgium we analyze which firm and industry characteristics are conducive to cooperation with universities. From a methodological perspective we consider that the decision to cooperate with universities cannot be analyzed in isolation from the overall innovation strategy of the firm. Cooperating with universities is complementary to other innovation activities such as performing own R&D, sourcing public information and cooperative agreements with other partners. In the econometric analysis we fully account for the impact of these simultaneously determined R&D activities and our results are consistent with complementarity of these agreements with other innovation activities. In addition, we examine the theoretically conflicting effect of the appropriation conditions on the likelihood of cooperating with universities. Consistent with the open science paradigm, we find no evidence for the importance of the capacity to appropriate the returns from innovation for explaining cooperative agreements with universities. JEL classification : O32, O34, L13