Learning by Doing, Knowledge Spillovers, and Technological and Organizational Change in High-Altitude Mountaineering

John R. Boyce and Diane P. Bischak
Additional contact information
John R. Boyce: Department of Economics, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, boyce@ucalgary.ca
Diane P. Bischak: Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Journal of Sports Economics, 2010, vol. 11, issue 5, 496-532

Abstract: We present an analysis of microlevel data from mountaineering on the 14 peaks over 8,000 m in height during the period 1895-1998. Prior to 1950, no expedition was successful in making an ascent and almost half of expeditions experienced a death, frostbite, or altitude sickness. By the 1990s, however, over half of the expeditions would successfully make an ascent and only about one in seven would experience an adverse outcome. Our objective is to distinguish between the effects of learning by doing and knowledge spillovers versus the effects of changes in technology or economic organization in explaining these results. As we can identify each climber by name and nationality, as well as each expedition team's methods and outcomes, we are able to disentangle the effects of learning at the individual, national, and international levels from effects due to improvements in climbing technology or changes in organizational methods and objectives. We find evidence that both individual learning by doing and learning through knowledge spillovers have contributed to the observed increase in ascent rates and to the decrease in death, frostbite, and altitude sickness rates.

Keywords: learning by doing; knowledge spillovers; technological change; mountaineering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002509355639 (text/html)

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:sae:jospec:v:11:y:2010:i:5:p:496-532

DOI: 10.1177/1527002509355639

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sports Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().