Innovation, Metropolitan and Productivity

This paper assesses the contribution to productivity of firms’ internal innovation efforts and spatially-specific factors. A dynamic GMM-estimator is applied to a panel of close to 3,000 firms located in 81 Swedish regions and observed over a 10-year period. The magnitude of benefits from the knowledge milieu of an agglomeration is sizeable, but varies between firms depending on their particular R&D-strategy and location within a metropolitan region.