International knowledge flows and the administrative barriers to mobility

Sultan Orazbayev ()

Research Policy, 2017, vol. 46, issue 9, 1655-1665

Abstract: Face-to-face contact, even temporary one, helps researchers form personal ties and transfer tacit knowledge. The ability of researchers to colocate, including attendance at international conferences, workshops and seminars, is affected by the administrative barriers to international mobility. This paper uses a gravity-style empirical framework to examine the link between international knowledge flows and immigration policies. The results suggest that the paper walls erected by such policies reduce not just the mobility of individuals, but also the diffusion of knowledge. A moderately restrictive mobility barrier reduces incoming and outgoing knowledge flows by about 0.8–1.3% per year. The effect of knowledge-exporting country's policy persists for nearly 10 years. There is also a short-term asymmetry: diffusion of recent knowledge is affected more by the immigration policy of a knowledge-exporter rather than a knowledge-importer.

Keywords: Diffusion of knowledge; Academic mobility; Immigration policy; Travel visa policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F29 O33 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004873331730135X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: International knowledge flows and the administrative barriers to mobility (2017)
Working Paper: International knowledge flows and the administrative barriers to mobility (2016)
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:respol:v:46:y:2017:i:9:p:1655-1665

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2017.08.001

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().