知的クラスター政策による産学官連携支援の効果

抄録

University-industry R & D collaboration has been attracting much attention as an effective means to promote innovation. Also in Japan, public support has been provided to such local R & D collaboration through cluster policies. However, no empirical evaluation has been made using micro data regarding MEXT （Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology）’s knowledge cluster policies, which are comparable to the cluster policies in Europe. Thus, using micro data from public statistics and employing fixed effect panel estimation, this paper empirically examines the direct effects of these cluster policies on R & D expenditures of cluster universities and firms, on the business performance （including sales growth and productivity） of participating firms as well as its spillover effects on all manufacturing plants in cluster regions. Estimation results show that after cluster participation, ① universities and public research institutes significantly increased internal and external research expenditures and research fund from private firms, ② participating firms’ business performance did not significantly improve, and ③ manufacturing plants in cluster areas rather significantly decreased labor productivity, compared to their counterparts that were not located in cluster areas. These results suggest that MEXT’s cluster policies promoted university-industry R & D collaboration, which, however, did not induce overall growth of participating firms’ and local manufacturers’ productivity.