Evolution of specialisation: public research in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries

This aims to contribute to the debate over the relationship between public scientific research and industrial innovation, analysing, air particular, t he importance of distance in the process of knowledge transfer from public research to industrial innovation. It also examines the evolution of scient ific specialisation in the chemical and pharmaceutical fields in the four l argest European countries (the UK, Germany, France, and Italy), the Europea n Union as a whole, the USA and Japan. The results show that the chemical a nd pharmaceutical sectors have completely different perceptions of, and mak e different use of, public research, and that the pharmaceutical sector rel ies on international, and particularly North American, research much more t han does the chemical sector, The country-level analysis of specialisation patterns indicates that the USA has a much more integrated and persistent s pecialisation profile in medical chemistry and pharmacy & pharmacology than the other countries.