Labor Mobility of Scientists, Technological Diffusion, and the Firm's Patenting Decision

Jinyoung Kim and Gerald Marschke

RAND Journal of Economics, 2005, vol. 36, issue 2, 298-317

Abstract: We develop and test a model of the patenting and R&D decisions of an innovating firm whose scientist-employees sometimes quit to join or start a rival. In our model, the innovating firm patents to protect itself from its employees. We show theoretically that the risk of a scientist's departure reduces the firm's R&D expenditures and raises its propensity to patent an innovation. We find evidence from firm-level panel data that is consistent with this latter result. Our results suggest that scientists' turnover is associated with cross-industry patenting variation and with recent economy-wide increases in patenting. Scientists' turnover may also partly account for why small firms have high patent-R&D ratios.

Keywords: Economic Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior Asymmetric and Private Information career concerns; judicial decision-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (107)

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Working Paper: Labor Mobility of Scientists, Technological Diffusion, and the Firm's Patenting Decision (2001)
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