Universities' gravitational effects on the location of knowledge-intensive investments in Brazil.

For a while, universities have been perceived by academics and policymakers as potential engines of regional economic development. One specific field of analysis in this regard involves the role of academia in shaping regional attractiveness for knowledge-intensive investments. Nonetheless, there are scant approaches dealing with these issues in developing countries. The goal of this article is to address the attraction effects exerted by high-quality universities on the location of investments in knowledge-intensive activities at the level of cities and microregions, drawing from the case of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Two-stage Heckman models are applied. Findings suggest weak effects associated with top-tier universities in defining whether a given location receives productive investments or not, but these gravitational impacts are absent in the definition of investment levels. These results indicate weak connections between academic research and agglomeration trends around specific locations in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]