Universities and regional economic growth in Spanish regions

Abstract

This paper examines the main contributions of universities to the economic\ngrowth of Spanish regions. It calculates the separate effects of the different university\nfunctions on the regional economy, namely the creation of human capital, research and\ntechnology transfer. It includes a panel data set with the key variables of university\nactivities and their effects on the economy at provincial level. The econometric estimations\nare based on information for all 47 public universities and include 34 Spanish provinces.\nThe empirical results suggest that the growth of regional GVA is positively correlated to\nboth the human capital created by universities and the stock of university patents