Borders and distance in knowledge spillovers: Dying over time or dying with age?—Evidence from patent citations

Yao Li

European Economic Review, 2014, vol. 71, issue C, 152-172

Abstract: This paper explores the effects of distance as well as subnational and national borders on international and intranational knowledge spillovers through patent citations across the 39 most patent-cited countries and 319 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) within the U.S. In contrast to previous findings that knowledge localization fades over time, border and distance effects increase over time for the same-age citations. This increasing effect of borders and distance is associated with strengthened knowledge agglomeration over time. Nevertheless, both border and distance effects decrease with the age of patents. Aggregate border effects are often overestimated due to various aggregation bias. Moreover, business travels and knowledge quality effectively attenuate the effect of subnational borders in knowledge flows.

Keywords: Border effect; Distance; Gravity; Knowledge spillovers; Patent citations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F2 O3 R1 R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292114001172
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Borders and Distance in Knowledge Spillovers: Dying Over Time or Dying with Age? - Evidence from Patent Citations (2013)
Working Paper: Borders and Distance in Knowledge Spillovers: Dying over Time or Dying with Age? - Evidence from Patent Citations (2009)
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:eee:eecrev:v:71:y:2014:i:c:p:152-172

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.07.005

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().