This Golden Anniversary Issue of the Studies in Regional Science is dedicated to celebrate the ‘double' 50th Anniversary of the JSRSAI.　The Japan Section of the Regional Science Association International (JSRSAI) celebrated the 50th Anniversary of its establishment last year, in October 2012 in Tokyo.　The 50th Anniversary of the JSRSAI hosted the 49th Annual Conference of the JSRSAI as well.　This year, JSRSAI will celebrate the 50th Anniversary Conference in October 2013 in Tokushima.　This one year difference between the establishment of the JSRSAI and its first annual conference has created a great opportunity to celebrate the ‘double' 50th Anniversary of the JSRSAI.　This Golden Anniversary Issue is very special in this sense as the papers in this issue were presented at a Special Session on “Academic Knowledge Commercialization, Universities and Regional Economic Development” as part of the 50^th Anniversary of the JSRSAI in 2012 in Tokyo and they were edited for publication in this Golden Anniversary Issue in order to celebrate the 50^th Annual Conference of the JSRSAI in 2013.　Therefore, the ‘double' celebration of both the 50^th Anniversary of the Japan Section and the 50^th Annual Conference of the JSRSAI is reflected in this Golden Anniversary Issue.
This Golden Anniversary Issue addresses a hot topic, the ‘commercialization of academic knowledge' that is increasingly seen as a potential economic development model, particularly for improving the capabilities and economic performance of regions.　The Issue consists of two parts and nine papers that highlight the central role of universities and commercialization of knowledge in a regional context from multiple perspectives.　While focusing especially on the new role of universities in regional economic development through knowledge commercialization, the Issue aims to provide a forum for discussion of whether, why, and how commercialization of knowledge can lead to higher levels of innovation and economic development.　The collection of papers in this Golden Issue considers commercialization and valorization of knowledge as an essential element of regional innovation systems and economic development.　Therefore, the Issue addresses modern theories and concepts relating to research on commercialization of knowledge and regional economic development and provides an overview and introduction to this fascinating and rapidly emerging field for academics, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, researchers and students who share a common interest and commitment to knowledge commercialization.

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The development of university spin-off firms is one of the many ways that universities can contribute to regional economic development.　In response to the expectation that university spin-off companies will lead to increased economic development outcomes, universities, and government organizations that support or provide oversight to universities, have taken steps to encourage university spinoff activities.　This paper shows the response of universities in the state of Ohio, and in particular, one university, The University of Toledo, in developing spin-off companies in response to both institutional and state promotional efforts to do so.　The paper reports on spin-off activity in Ohio over the 2000-2009 period and compares these data to overall research funding at the universities and success in winning State of Ohio grants to support technology-based business expansion.　The paper also shows steps taken at The University of Toledo, a mid-sized university in a lagging industrial city, in promoting spin-off activity.　While showing that The University of Toledo and other state universities have increased their number of spinoff companies over the period of investigation, the paper cautions that more data is needed to evaluate the overall contribution of spin-off companies to regional economic development and whether developing business ventures is the optimal use of a faculty members time to generate regional economic development returns.

JEL Classification: I23, I25, O31, O32

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The expansion of universities' missions to include the support of regional economic development has led to conflicts between traditional norms of open science and the norms of entrepreneurialism, as well as placing university faculty in situations of potential conflict of interest.　We posit that there are important differences between how universities support regional economic development in terms of leading to normative and ethical conflicts.　Using data from two independent samples of U.S. and European faculty, we explore and compare faculty attitudes towards regional engagement and knowledge commercialization using factor analysis.　 The results show that U.S. faculty make a clear distinction between the appropriateness of university regional engagement, on the one hand, and knowledge commercialization, on the other.　European faculty view regional engagement and knowledge commercialization along the same spectrum in terms of appropriateness.　 At the same time, a sizeable portion of faculty in both the U.S. and in Europe simultaneously express positive attitudes towards knowledge commercialization and commitment to the norms of open science and importance of avoiding conflicts of interest.

JEL Classification: O31, O32, O38, O17

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Prominent research has focused on collaboration and its change through the last decades, from international comparative approaches to relationships between public research organisations and the surrounding society.　Within academia, research on collaboration has mostly concerned natural sciences, engineering and technology.　Researchers from such disciplines generally possess a more positive attitude to collaboration activities.　We aim to add to the research on collaboration with a focus on external and the nature of the internal social capital.　This is done by quantitatively analysing a large number of researchers' attitude to collaboration and activity level through a smaller set of questions.　The empirical design is exploratory and can be used as a base for the development of further research.　The faculties of interest are humanities, social science, and natural science within a multi faculty university.　The results demonstrate that professors and researchers from natural science have a more positive attitude towards collaboration.　However, researchers from social science are significantly more engaged in collaboration activities than natural scientist.　We conclude that the attitude to collaboration and actual participation in collaboration activities not necessarily correlates.

JEL Classification: R10

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The education services provided in any given country increasingly contribute to human capital that is employed in another country.　On the one hand, graduates may seek to obtain the highest return to the knowledge they gained in their home country by working abroad.　On the other hand, some students purchase educational services abroad and will subsequently work abroad, or return home to utilize the internationally acquired knowledge in the domestic labour market.　In this paper we use data from the 2006-07 Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey in New Zealand to examine how years of foreign and domestic education affect earnings in the labour market.　We account for differences in innate ability by aggregating subjective responses to pertinent questions in the survey and by incorporating parents' educational background.　Our findings reconfirm the extensive evidence that education gained in a country of birth has generally a lower return in a foreign labour market than the native born receive in this labour market for the equivalent education.　Post-settlement education in the host country has a higher return for migrants than for comparable native born.　We also find that the highest returns are obtained among those who, after studying abroad, return home to work- a fact for which there has been to date scarce evidence.　Thus, exposure to foreign education can lead to a triple gain: for the country where the education is obtained, for the students' home country and for the students themselves.

JEL Classification: F22, I24, J24, J31

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This paper intends to examine how the social environment has changed in international agricultural cooperation from the viewpoint of international food system theory.　Subsequently the “knowledge creation theory”, which has made significant progress in the field of economics, and the life cycle theory are integrated based on the theoretical foundation in industrial cluster theory to explore the possibilities and issues in knowledge creation (including development of human resources) in international cooperation in agriculture.　It concluded that the significance of international agricultural cooperation lies in the creation of new knowledge by each researcher and institution through cooperation, and the significance of that cooperation becomes evident when agricultural issues are solved through innovation as a result of knowledge creation.　Furthermore, if international cooperation in agriculture aspires to attain the situation where relevant entities such as universities and research institutions cooperate and compete globally, then an innovation induction principle in global “industrial clusters”which bear a similar relationship, or the knowledge creation framework based on the principle of cooperation supremacy, will be effective.　Hence this paper would like to look at the direction of research in international agricultural cooperation as an issue of “knowledge governance”in addition to knowledge supply in knowledge creation.

JEL Classification: Q10, O30

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This paper investigates how accessibility to knowledge is related to the new firm formation in Sweden.　Utilizing municipal level data, the paper examines how and to what extent geographic proximity to establishments that are specialized in formal knowledge creation plays a role for the overall entrepreneurial milieu in a city region.　While measuring accessibility to knowledge at intra-municipal, intra-regional and extra-regional levels, the paper maps out the clustering patterns of new firms and ranks the municipalities by their performance in creating an entrepreneurial milieu.　The clustering patterns of new firms highlight critical factors in new firm formation and entrepreneurial performance of regions.

JEL Classification: I23, I25, M13, O31, O32

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The determinants of business survival are an important topic of empirical study that is crucial for the design of effective policies aimed at forming and sustaining new firms in the U.S. regions.　The literature suggests a wide range of firm-, industry-, market-, and region-related factors critical for business longevity.　The effects of regional characteristics on the likelihood of firm exit are the least studied.　This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the relationship between the level of metropolitan innovation and survival in two U.S. high-technology sectors, computer and electronic product manufacturing, and healthcare services.　Using non-parametric survival analysis, we estimate the hazard faced by companies in both sectors conditioning it on innovation and controlling for a number of geographical, industrial, regional, and firm characteristics, one at a time.　The results suggest that in computer and electronic product manufacturing the effects of innovation are highly dependent on other variables.　The general pattern of higher hazard faced by establishments in more innovative regions usually reverses when the focus is on large and expanding companies, as well as on all firms in more agglomerated and industrially diverse environments.　In healthcare services, the effect of intervening variables is less pronounced.　With some exceptions, there is a positive relationship between the level of innovation and business survival in this sector.

JEL Classification: C14, C41, D22, L63, O18

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The answer to the question raised in the title of this paper is, of course, both.　In this paper we explore the several values of a widely used term “industrial corridor”.　We find that even though this term is frequently and often carelessly used, it has real value for understanding marketing potentials and economic complexities in a specified area.　As a marketing device it contributes to “reputation” and “buzz” and when qualified by terms such as “technology,” it can help brand an area.　When used to describe a dynamic economic region the notion of a corridor suggests a place where firms of a similar type will locate, where linked firms might locate, where there is an emphasis on development of appropriate transport, energy, and other infrastructure and where intra-corridor networking is a fact of everyday life.　In this paper we evaluate the place of corridors in the literature of regional science and in the applied science of regional economic development.　To bring focus to the discussion we will draw upon the example of the Tucson Technology Corridor.

JEL Classification: P25, O14, O21, O30, R12

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The knowledge innovation process can be defined as consisting of two sub-processes, knowledge production process and knowledge commercialization process.　Those two sub-processes are supposed to have proper inputs and outputs and they are linked together by technological innovations (patents).　In the article, the innovation efficiency of knowledge innovation process and its two sub-processes is measured by DEA modelling (data envelopment analysis) in the period of 2004-2010.
Altogether, 19 countries of the European Union are studied, with a particular focus on the efficiency of innovation processes in the Visegrad countries which joined the EU in the same year 2004.　Financial system is one of the major factors which determine the innovative activities of actors.　The aim of article is to uncover slacks (surpluses) on the input and output side of knowledge processes.　It can be supposed that the largest slacks exist on the side of the financial support in relation to produced innovative outputs.　The DEA method shows that majority of countries reach higher relative innovation efficiency in knowledge commercialization than in knowledge production and the most important slacks can be found in financing of research and development.　Findings also suggest that although the efficiency of innovation processes would have been expected higher in the old EU member countries, their efficiency is lower than in some of the Visegrad countries.　The reason may be the ability of the Visegrad countries to generate relatively satisfactory outputs from low inputs compared with other countries.　Surprisingly, they are also in a group of high performers in bringing innovations to market, although they show substantial deficiencies in generating patents and papers.

JEL Classification: O340

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