Public research-industry relations in Italy

Following the growing interest towards the role of the knowledge in the modern economies the economic literature has focused a lot of studies into the role of the producers of new knowledge, e.g. universities and public research institutions. The relations between these bodies and the firms, the contributions of the technological spillovers at the local level, the creation of new technology based firms, the challange between fundamental research and applied research are some of the arguments of the present debate. This paper represents a short survey of the international literature with a focus on the studies concerning Italy. The results show a common evidence even if in some areas the Italian sistuation is quite underdeveloped with large areas for future policy intervention.