Abstract This paper analyses the impact of universities on firm performance based on the universe of firms in Germany from 2013 to 2017. From a regional perspective, firms have 0.92 % more revenues per employee in counties with a university than in a county without a university. To address potential endogeneity concerns, I focus on a subsample of universities, founded for political reasons. Analysing different types of German universities indicates that the high-skilled regional labour supply is important for the positive impact of universities, while proximity to the knowledge spillovers of research-intensive universities is associated with weaker firm performance. The latter finding is at least partially explained by the networks of multinational firms.
{"title":"Universities and Firm Performance: Evidence from Germany","authors":"Philipp Meier","doi":"10.1515/ger-2024-0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ger-2024-0043","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper analyses the impact of universities on firm performance based on the universe of firms in Germany from 2013 to 2017. From a regional perspective, firms have 0.92 % more revenues per employee in counties with a university than in a county without a university. To address potential endogeneity concerns, I focus on a subsample of universities, founded for political reasons. Analysing different types of German universities indicates that the high-skilled regional labour supply is important for the positive impact of universities, while proximity to the knowledge spillovers of research-intensive universities is associated with weaker firm performance. The latter finding is at least partially explained by the networks of multinational firms.","PeriodicalId":504532,"journal":{"name":"German Economic Review","volume":"42 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141383247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}