Proximity and learning: evidence from a post-WW2 intellectual reparations program

Gone but not forgotten: knowledge flows, labor mobility, and enduring social relationships

Rasmus Bode, Guido Buenstorf and Dominik P Heinisch

Journal of Economic Geography, 2020, vol. 20, issue 3, 601-628

Abstract: Prior work indicates that proximity facilitates learning, but proximity reflects individual choices. New data on a British post-World War 2 program to detain and interrogate German industrial experts allow us to minimize selection bias and to disentangle individual dimensions of proximity. Our empirical analysis of post-detention patenting activities suggests that cognitive proximity was more important for interactive learning than social and institutional proximity. Detention in the UK increased inventors’ subsequent likelihood of interacting with UK partners as well as their post-detention patent output.

Keywords: Proximity; mobility; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 J61 N44 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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