Knowledge diffusion through employee mobility

Darren Filson and April Franco

No 272, Staff Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: In high-tech industries, one important method of diffusion is through employee mobility: many of the entering firms are started by employees from incumbent firms using some of their former employers? technological know-how. This paper explores the effect of incorporating this mechanism in a general industry framework by allowing employees to imitate their employers? know-how. The equilibrium is Pareto optimal since the employees ?pay? for the possibility of learning their employers? know-how. The model?s implications are consistent with data from the rigid disk drive industry. These implications concern the effects of know-how on firm formation and survival.

Keywords: Research and development; technological innovations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (100)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedmsr:272

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