How Do Travel Costs Shape Collaboration?

Christian Catalini (), Christian Fons-Rosen and Patrick Gaulé
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Christian Catalini: MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142; National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138; Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, 80539 München, Germany;

Management Science, 2020, vol. 66, issue 8, 3340-3360

Abstract: We develop a simple theoretical framework for thinking about how geographic frictions, and in particular travel costs, shape scientists’ collaboration decisions and the types of projects that are developed locally versus over distance. We then take advantage of a quasi-experiment—the introduction of new routes by a low-cost airline—to test the predictions of the theory. Results show that travel costs constitute an important friction to collaboration: after a low-cost airline enters, the number of collaborations increases between 0.3 and 1.1 times, a result that is robust to multiple falsification tests and causal in nature. The reduction in geographic frictions is particularly beneficial for high-quality scientists that are otherwise embedded in worse local environments. Consistent with the theory, lower travel costs also endogenously change the types of projects scientists engage in at different levels of distance. After the shock, we observe an increase in higher-quality and novel projects, as well as projects that take advantage of complementary knowledge and skills between subfields, and that rely on specialized equipment. We test the generalizability of our findings from chemistry to a broader data set of scientific publications and to a different field where specialized equipment is less likely to be relevant, mathematics. Last, we discuss implications for the formation of collaborative research and development teams over distance.

Keywords: scientific collaboration; geographic frictions; temporary colocation; face-to-face meetings; recombinations of ideas; travel costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

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https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3381 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: How Do Travel Costs Shape Collaboration? (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:66:y:2020:i:8:p:3340-3360

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