Moving People with Ideas - Innovation, Inter-regional Mobility and Firm Heterogeneity

Riccardo Crescenzi and Luisa Gagliardi

SERC Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper looks at the link between inter-regional mobility, innovation and firms' behavioural heterogeneity in their reliance on localised external sources of knowledge. By linking patent data (capturing inventors' inter-regional mobility) with firm-level data (providing information on firms' innovation inputs and behaviour) a robust identification strategy makes it possible to shed new light on the geographical mobility-innovation nexus. The analysis of English firms suggests that firm-level heterogeneity - largely overlooked in previous studies - is the key to explain the innovation impact of inter-regional mobility over and above learning-by-hiring mechanisms. A causal link between inflows of new inventors into the local labour market and innovation emerges only for firms that make the use of external knowledge sources an integral part of their innovation strategies.

Keywords: Innovation; Labour Mobility; Inter-regional Migration; Spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 O15 O31 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-sbm, nep-tid and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Working Paper: Moving people with ideas - innovation inter-regional mobility and firm heterogeneity (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:sercdp:0174

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