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Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on March 4, 2009
Journal of Economic Geography 2009 9(4):439-468; doi:10.1093/jeg/lbp008
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Mobility of skilled workers and co-invention networks: an anatomy of localized knowledge flows

Stefano Breschi*,{ddagger} and Francesco Lissoni*,{dagger}

*KITES-CESPRI—Università Commerciale L. Bocconi, Milan, Italy.
{dagger}DIMI, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Università di Brescia, Brescia, Italy.

{ddagger}Corresponding author: Stefano Breschi, Kites-Cespri, Department of Economics, Università L. Bocconi, Via Sarfatti 25, 20136 Milan, Italy. email <stefano.breschi{at}unibocconi.it>

JEL classifications: O33, R12, Z13

This article illustrates the contribution of mobile inventors and networks of inventors to the diffusion of knowledge across firms and within cities or states. It is based upon an original data set on US inventors’ patent applications at the European Patent Office, in the fields of drugs, biotechnology and organic chemistry. The study combines the methodology originally proposed by Jaffe et al. (1993, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108: 577–598) with tools from social network analysis, in order to evaluate extent of the localization of knowledge flows, as measured by patent citations. After controlling for inventors’ mobility and for the resulting co-invention network, the residual effect of spatial proximity on knowledge diffusion is found to be greatly reduced. We argue that the most fundamental reason why geography matters in constraining the diffusion of knowledge is that mobile researchers are not likely to relocate in space, so that their co-invention network is also localized. In the light of these results, we revisit common interpretations of localized knowledge flows as externalities.

Keywords: knowledge diffusion, localized spillovers, mobility, networks
Date submitted: 20 July 2008     Date accepted: 30 December 2008


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