The Geography of Inventors and Local Knowledge Spillovers in R&D

Brian C. Fujiy

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: I causally estimate local knowledge spillovers in R&D and quantify their importance when implementing R&D policies. Using a new administrative panel on German inventors, I estimate these spillovers by isolating quasi-exogenous variation from the arrival of East German inventors across West Germany after the Reunification of Germany in 1990. Increasing the number of inventors by 1% increases inventor productivity by 0.4%. I build a spatial model of innovation, and show that these spillovers are crucial when reducing migration costs for inventors or implementing R&D subsidies to promote economic activity.

Keywords: inventors; research and development; innovation; agglomeration; spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 J61 O31 O4 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-sbm, nep-tid and nep-ure
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2024/adrm/ces/CES-WP-24-59.pdf First version, 2024 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-59

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