Barriers to Knowledge Creation in the Multinational Firm

Cagatay Bircan, Beata Javorcik and Stefan Pauly

No 19108, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper shows that knowledge creation, as measured by patents, is increasingly conducted in cross-border collaborative teams of inventors. It documents the importance of cross-border communication costs by showing that a higher overlap in business hours is associated with increased cross-border collaboration. This effect is distinct from the effect of physical distance, which matters as well. It is stronger for technology classes where lab experiments are involved and thus more frequent interactions may be required. The data further suggest that episodes of telecommunications liberalization (and the resulting decline in the cost of international calls) lead to an increase in cross-border collaboration, particularly when the business hour overlap between the headquarters and a subsidiary is larger. This effect is stronger for experiment-based technology classes. Less successful inventors respond more than their most successful peers.

JEL-codes: F14 F23 L23 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19108 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:19108

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19108

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().