The role of inter-organizational proximity on the evolution of the European Aerospace R&D collaboration network

WP 02/14; The influence exerted by five dimensions of inter-organizational proximity (geographical, organizational, network, institutional and technological) on the evolution of the collaboration networks subsidized by the European Union Framework Programmes in the Aerospace sector is studied. The role of the proximity dimensions is controlled by means of a longitudinal analysis with a stochastic actor-oriented model, which will be run on four observations of the network starting in the fourth (1994-1998) and ending in the seventh Framework Programme (2007-2013). Results show that organizational proximity is the most important driver for the longitudinal evolution of the network. Further, this form of proximity is constant in time, analogously to the geographical one which, on its side, only moderately affects network's evolution. Network proximity plays a weak but positive influence, while the institutional and technological dimensions do not affect the evolution of the network. Anyway, when proximity is evaluated on single institutional and technological types, different roles are detected. Regarding the former, research centres have a preference for inter-organizational mixing, while firms prefer to cooperate with firms. As for the latter, a repulsive tendency among system integrators is appreciated. Organizations' patenting activity, introduced as a control variable, does not play a significant role on network's evolutio