The Geography of Higher Education in Québec, Canada

Annex B. Measuring the impact of location on R&D transfers between universities and enterprises

This annex presents the analysis of the interactions between Québec HEIs’ and enterprises in terms of R&D expenditure, taking into account the spatial dimension, in co-operation with Alessandro Alasia, Julio Rosa, and Mahamat Hamit-Haggar from Statistics Canada. The results inform Chapter 3 of the review of Québec.

The data

This assessment uses the Linkable File Environment (LFE), a statistical tool developed by Statistics Canada. The LFE combines administrative data and survey data from multiple sources. In particular, this study uses the following data sources:

• Statistics Canada’s Research and Development in Canadian Industry Survey (RDCI) 2017 to 2019 linked to administrative data is the main data source (unbalanced panel of 20,001 R&D business performers).

• Administrative data, including:

  • The Business Register;

  • General Index of Financial Information (GIFI-T1 and T2).

The main variable of interest is the distance between the enterprise and the closest university, among other firms’ dimensions such as size; revenue; sector of activity; provinces; public grants; foreign outsourced expenditures. The dependent variables are:

• R&D payments to HEIs;

• Ratio of (Experimental R&D expenditures \ Total R&D expenditures).

Table A B.1. Descriptive variables for Québec, by year

	R&D performers without university link by year			R&D performers with university link by year
	2017	2018	2019	2017	2018	2019
Variables
Average number of R&D employees (#)	16.1	16.1	18.4	37.4	35.3	36.4
Average number of total employees (#)	202.7	202.1	216.2	572.4	502.3	541.5
Average revenue (CAD)	81 859 132	89 966 195	107 048 977	333 132 236	320 759 405	353 220 734
Average sales (CAD)	62 253 709	67 537 284	73 953 620	235 853 431	208 702 667	242 925 874
Average total R&D expenditures (CAD)	1 744 614	1 766,245	2 262 659	7 915 360	6 928 607	4 682 538
Average experimental R&D expenditures (CAD)	1 529 985	1 523 564	2 093 367	7 268 133	6 342 794	4 225 301
Average federal support -Grants/R&D expenditures (%)	6.3	6.5	6.9	5.8	6.5	6.0
Average R&D expenditures contracted outside Canada (%)	5.9	6.5	7.1	48.3	35.2	44.5
Average age of the enterprise (Years)	18.9	19.1	19.5	18.6	19.5	19.2
Average distance with the closest university (km)	16.9	17.1	16.1	18.5	18.6	20.9

Note: Custom tabulation, produced for the study “Linkages between academia – firms and regional innovative entrepreneurial ecosystem” by Julio Rosa; Mahamat Haggar; John Baker and Giorgia Ponti.

Source: Linkable File Environment (LFE)-Statistics Canada-Centre for Special Business Projects.