LABOR MOBILITY OF SCIENTISTS, TECHNOLOGICAL DIFFUSION, AND THE FIRM’S PATENTING DECISION

Jinyoung Kim and Gerald Marschke

No 586, Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings from Econometric Society

Abstract: We develop and test a model of the patenting and R&D decisions of an innovating firm whose scientist-employees sometime 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: Labor market for scientists and engineers; patents; research and development; job turnover; mobility of scientists; technological diffusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J63 O32 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-08-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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