Network-Mediated Knowledge Spillovers: A Cross-Country Comparative Analysis of Information Security Innovations
Neil Gandal,
Lee Branstetter and
Nadav Kunievsky
No 12268, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Abstract:
A large and growing literature has used patent and patent citation data to measure knowledge spillovers across inventions and organizations, but relatively few papers in this literature have explicitly considered the collaboration networks formed by inventors as a mechanism for shaping and transmitting these knowledge flows. This paper utilizes an approach developed by Fershtman and Gandal (FG 2011) (and applied to Open Source Software) to examine the incidence and nature of knowledge flows mediated by the collaboration networks of inventors active in the information security industry. This is an industry in which a number of nations outside the United States, including Israel, have emerged as important centers of innovation. Israeli prominence in this sector is often attributed, in part, to a dense network of personal collections and collaborations that has its genesis in elite intelligence units in the Israeli Defense Forces, through which many Israeli information security inventors and entrepreneurs receive their first exposure to this domain. Using data from U.S. PTO patent grants in information security, we find that the quality of Israeli information security inventions is systematically linked to the structure of the collaborative network generated by Israeli inventors in this sector. Using the FG (2011) model, this suggests that there are knowledge spillovers from the network. In some other nations, invention quality is less closely linked to the collaboration networks of inventors. This research highlights the importance of direct interaction among inventors as a conduit for flows of frontier scientific knowledge.
Keywords: Knowledge spillovers; Patents; Information security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-knm, nep-net, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12268 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
Related works:
Working Paper: Network-Mediated Knowledge Spillovers: A Cross-Country Comparative Analysis of Information Security Innovations (2017) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12268
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12268
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().