Introduction

Abstract

Fifteen years after the first widely quoted study on modern technological collaboration (Mariti and Smiley, 1983) economists still argue about the right approach to conceptualizing inter-firm collaboration. Collaboration in research and development (R&D), in particular, has proven to be an especially difficult subject given the complexities encountered in understanding the process of technological advance in industry. Almost fifteen years after major policy initiatives to promote inter-firm cooperation in R&D were developed on both sides of the North Atlantic, debate keeps raging on whether the implemented policy measures have been successful in boosting the rate of industrial innovation. The National Cooperative Research Act, ratified by the Congress of the United States in 1984, and the successive Framework Programmes for (cooperative) research and technological development, first implemented by the Commission of the European Community in the same year, were considered landmark policy initiatives which, in response to warnings of lagging competitiveness, would blaze a trail for things to come. At this date, we can hardly claim that we know the realized economic returns.