The influence of higher education on the national innovation system in Portugal

Many economists agree that countries wishing to develop their national economies should focus on increasing their innovation output. In recent years, the Portuguese government has pursued this goal, taking strides to improve the country's national system of innovation. This effort has included policy measures to increase the educational attainment of the Portuguese population and to improve the amount of collaboration between academia and industry in Portugal. Prior studies of locational effects have concluded that universities have a positive effect on the innovation output of the regions in which they are located. However, there is little understanding of how this locational effect varies with alternative types of higher education institutions, such as polytechnics and community colleges. This thesis evaluates the co-locational effects of educational institutions and industry clusters on innovation output, and makes recommendations for how these results may be put to use, given the historical context of the Portuguese higher education system. The analysis is a comparative study of the geographic sub-regions within Portugal and the U.S. states of Georgia and Pennsylvania. The data used in the analysis includes industry data (enterprises, employment, and wages), educational data (number of graduates by field and type of institution), and innovation survey data. The result of the co-location analysis shows that in Portugal, the technology-focused courses at universities and polytechnics are not concentrated in the same region as technological industry.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Ringo, John Decker

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Christopher Magee.

• Engineering Systems Division.
• Technology and Policy Program.
• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53061

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53061