Exploring the drivers of patenting activity in Polish regions

Purpose:The main aim of this article is to explore the drivers of patenting activity of Polish regions.We hypothesise that R&D expenditures, as well as internationalization measures or regional economy indicators have statistically significant impact on patenting at the regional level.Design/methodology/approach: In the following article, an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is utilized.Specifically, patents granted by Polish Patenting Office are regressed on various standard, as well as non-orthodox measures of innovative activity To account for unobserved, time-invariant region characteristics, a fixed effects (FE) model was chosen, supported by highly significant outcome of the Hausman test.Findings: The results indicated that the determinants of innovative activity utilized in countrylevel studies are effective in explaining patenting activity on the regional level.Statistically significant relationship between dependent variable and various independent variables was demonstrated.First of all, region's economy's size, measured by GDP per capita and number of firms show positive impact on the number of patents granted, similarly to utilized internationalization measures (firms with foreign capital, foreign students).On the contrary, the number of university graduates is negatively related to the number of patents granted, which remains slightly less intuitive.At the same time, the impact of R&D and expenditures on patenting appears to be more complex and non-linear. Research limitations/implications:The following article contains several limitations.The patenting activities should be preferably conducted on the firm or industry level data.Second, a comparison between determinants of patenting activity in developed and nondeveloped economies would benefit the field, however, given the choice of independent variables, was subject to data availability.Finally, given ambiguous results of the impact of R&D expenditures on patenting in both, absolute and relative terms, different types of R&D expenditures should be compared, once available.Originality/value: To authors knowledge is the first study that employs panel data framework in the field of patenting at the regional level in Poland -modestly innovative and non-highincome country.