Industry-University Links and Firms’ Resilience: Evidence for Spanish Firms

This study analyses the extent to which industry-university links in innovation activities influence firms’ performance at downturns. In doing so, we use a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms to estimate how those that collaborate with universities or acquire R&D from universities prior to the Great Recession out-performed, in terms of real sales growth, their counterparts, and even so in sectors that were severely hit by the crisis (as measured by export growth). Our results suggest that knowledge transfers from universities became more valuable at bad times. These results are robust to various specifications of the model. Furthermore, our findings suggest that vertical and horizontal product differentiation is a key mechanism for the greater resilience of firms with university links during the Great Recession.