Free movement of inventors: open-border policy and innovation in Switzerland

Gabriele Cristelli and Francesco Lissoni

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We study the innovation effects of the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (AFMP), signed by Switzerland and the EU in 1999. Using geocoded patent data, complemented by matched inventor-immigrant-census records, we identify a large number of cross-border inventors (CBIs), commuters from neighbouring countries working in Swiss R&D labs. We show that, during the AFMP implementation phase, the influx of CBIs increased differentially across regions at different driving distances from the border, causing a 24% increase in patents, mostly due to large and medium patent holders (as opposed to very large ones) and to inventor teams mixing CBIs and natives. We do not detect any adverse effect on native inventors and show that Swiss incumbent inventors collaborating with CBIs increased their productivity. Our evidence suggests complementarity between CBIs’ and Swiss incumbents’ knowledge assets.

Keywords: Immigration; Innovation; Patents; Inventors; Free Movement of Persons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-int, nep-ipr, nep-isf, nep-mig, nep-sbm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/107433/1/MPRA_paper_107433.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Free movement of inventors: open-border policy and innovation in Switzerland (2024)
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:pra:mprapa:107433

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().