University‐industry linkages: What are the determinants of distance in collaborations?

In the last twenty years, universities' efforts to collaborate with industry and foster knowledge transfer have increased progressively. Many of these efforts have been directed at firms located at a distance from the university, and sometimes in a different country. Based on an original database of interviews with 197 Italian university departments, this paper determines the effects of geographical location, research performance and researcher mobility on the frequency of university-industry collaborations and on the probability of departments engaging in distant collaborations.