Mabel Sánchez Barrioluengo' submission "Regional Human Capital and University Orientation: a case study on Spain" was awarded the Best Paper Prize at the 2014 EU-SPRI Conference "Science and Innovation Policy: Dynamics, Challenges, Responsibility and Practice" held in Manchester (UK).
This work elaborates an empirical analysis of the determinants of human capital (HC) in 17 Spanish regions. It is a contribution to both the regional economics and the labour economics literatures. A key novelty of this study is the articulation of the pathways through which university contributes to create and mobilize knowledge. The main finding is that regional university orientation has a differential effect on local skill endowments across three broad types of regions: research-oriented (leaders); industry intensive (followers) and developing (laggards).