Organisational vs. geographical proximity

Several contributions explore the motives and the benefits that arise when scientists collaborate. (See, among others, de Solla Price 1966 Merton 1973 Narin and Withlow, 1990). Moreover, when the mechanisms that give rise to 

To test these propositions I selected 4,650 patents where at least one inventor is located in Europe out of a random sample of 10,000 chemical patents applied at the EPO in 1986-1997, and defined three patent characteristics  

Breadth of the network. The breadth of the network of inventors is proxied by the number of inventors listed in the patents. Again, a higher 

The data used in this chapter are drawn from different sourees. I started by selecting a random sample of 10,000 chemical patents from a database of 201,531 chemical patents granted and applied at the European Patent Office (EPO, 1998) between 1986-1997.1 did not make any distinction between patent applications that have been granted, and those that have not been granted yet. 

---