Thread by @Nightingale_P

Graham Stringer MP asked me if there was any evidence that spreading research around the country might help with economic growth. Well it turns out that the Swedes have done just that. And luckily its been evaluated. This is what the evidence suggests... 1/n

Rowland Andersson and coauthors looked at the data and found a strong positive impact

Andersson, Roland, John M. Quigley, and Mats Wilhelmsson. 2009. “Urbanization, Productivity, and Innovation: Evidence from Investment in Higher Education,” J of Urban Economics, 66 (1), 2-15.

Opps you can get a pdf here cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/conte…

They found that after a 15 year policy to spread resources, a significant economically important effect. Patents etc went up when research went up. But the effect was very localised.

This was a follow up to another paper
cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/conte…
Which looked at the same policy and found similar positive effects.

More recently Abel and Deitz have looked at similar effects in the USA and found similar positive impacts. newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/m…

This was highlighted in a thread by @Noahpinion

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1065325121038995456

it is important to highlight that arguments that spreading research outside the golden triangle might lead to less excellence should be taken with a pinch of salt. The correct unit of analysis for looking at excellence is the research unit or team, not the university.

There is a huge amount of excellent research being undertaken outside the Golden Triangle, and unless there are convincing arguments for strong localised economies of scale (over and above strong localised diseconomies of scale which there certainly are), ... cont

its not clear there would be a problem.
There is a joke that to regenerate an area you build a Uni and wait 200 years. But if there is already a decent uni there you can get good effects far more quickly.
ends/n

Coda. Another good one
hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/P…