Is Inter-Firm Labor Mobility a Channel of Knowledge spillovers? Evidence from a Linked Employer-Employee Panel

Mika Maliranta, Pierre Mohnen and Petri Rouvinen ()
Additional contact information
Petri Rouvinen: The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

No 2008-005, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: An employer-employee panel is used to study whether the movement of workers across firms is a channel of unintended diffusion of R&D-generated knowledge. Somewhat surprisingly, hiring workers from others' R&D labs to one's own does not seem to be a significant spillover channel. Hiring workers previously in R&D to one's non-R&D activities, however, boosts both productivity and profitability. This is interpreted as evidence that these workers transmit knowledge that can be readily copied and implemented without much additional R&D effort.

Keywords: Labor Mobility; R&D Spillovers; Profitability; Linked Employer-Employee Data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 J24 J62 L25 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2008/wp2008-005.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Is inter-firm labor mobility a channel of knowledge spillovers? Evidence from a linked employer--employee panel (2009)
Working Paper: Is Inter-firm Labor Mobility a Channel of Knowledge Spillovers? Evidence from a Linked Employer-Employee Panel (2008)
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:unm:unumer:2008005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ad Notten ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).