We examine how the spatial and social proximity of inventors affects access to knowledge, focusing especially on how the two forms of proximity interact. Employing patent citation data and using same-MSA and co-ethnicity as proxies for spatial and social proximity, respectively, we estimate a knowledge flow production function. Our results suggest that although spatial and social proximity both increase the probability of knowledge flows between individuals, the marginal benefit of geographic proximity is greater for inventors who are not socially close. We also report that the marginal benefit of being members of the same technical community of practice is greater in terms of access to knowledge for inventors who are not co-located. Overall, these results imply that spatial and social proximity are substitutes in their influence on access to knowledge. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the optimal dispersion of socially connected inventors.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 64 (2008) Issue (Month): 2 (September) Pages: 258-269 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)