The economic impact of public universities in the United Kingdom

Given the complexity of university functions, previous studies have evidenced the economic impact of university teaching, research or entrepreneurial activities by adopting different theoretical approaches and methodologies. However, the natural role of universities in economic development is less well understood than is often presumed. According to the microeconomic foundation of endogenous economic theory, the objective of this exploratory study is to contribute to a better understanding of the regional economic impact of entrepreneurial universities’ activities (teaching, research and entrepreneurial). Our proposed model was tested with a two-stage least square regression weighted by regions using data of 147 UK public universities located in 74 of the 139 NUTS-3 regions of the country. We found the measure of teaching is strongly correlated with economic development, while the correlation between research and entrepreneurship measures is much weaker