Political, economic and research disintegration: The impact of geopolitical uncertainty on innovation and cross-border R&D collaborations

Uncertainty regarding the policy environment could be particularly detrimental for innovation, as it requires high-risk investment, and long-term commitments with scientists and research partners. This paper focuses on the effects of geopolitical uncertainty on innovations patenting and cross-border R&D collaborations, exploiting the UK exit from the EU as a quasi-natural experiment in a Difference-in-Difference (DiD) analysis. Our results reveals a significant disruption in cross-border research collaborations of UK organisations after the Brexit referendum, as EU based inventors were replaced by UK ones. Overall, the disruption has affected negatively the innovations of UK based organisations, decreasing the number of inventions patented overseas and their quality.