Main research interest : service activities, in particular innovation in services Motivation : services have traditionally been ignored in the innovation domain and regarded as “supplier- dominated” activities. But recent studies demonstrate that some services (in particular what are called knowledge-intensive services, KIS) play a key role in innovation

Different ways employed to date for studying the role of services in innovation: –Input-output techniques (forward and backward linkages, input-output models…) –Regression analysis (OLS) –Multivariate analysis (factor analysis, cluster analysis) But all were applied on a “national basis”

Many reasons to move from countries to regions, among others: –One of the major characteristics of services is “co- production”, that is to say, many services require face to face contact. –A great part of the knowledge diffused by services is of a tacit nature, therefore, it is better transmitted at short distances.

Spatial econometrics can be a good tool for analysing the role of services at a regional level and contribute to answer some questions: –Do services, and more concretely KIS, show some pattern of location? (it is widely known that a great share of KIS concentrate in capital cities in all European countries) –Is there a “direct” relationship between the innovation performance of a region and the quantity/quality of the KIS provided in the region? (most innovative regions show high participations of KIS in employment )

Different studies examined the relationship between the location of industries and the innovative performance at the regional level but: –Those that employed spatial econometrics focused on manufacturing industries (Moreno, Paci and Usai (2003) estimated a knowledge production function) –Those that study service activities do not employ spatial econometrics (for example, Drejer and Vinding(2003) estimated a latent class model using firm-level data )

Two main questions to analyse: –The existence of “patterns” in the location of KIS –The relationship between regional innovation performance and location of KIS How to do it? –By including in previous models a variable referring to KIS? –By elaborating our own model? Of what kind?