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Labor Mobility Of Scientists, Technological Diffusion, And The Firm’S Patenting Decision

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  • Jinyoung Kim
  • Gerald Marschke

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

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Econometric Society in its series Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings with number 586.

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Date of creation: 11 Aug 2004
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Handle: RePEc:ecm:feam04:586

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Keywords: Labor market for scientists and engineers; patents; research and development; job turnover; mobility of scientists; technological diffusion;

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References

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Jinyoung Kim & Sangjoon John Lee & Gerald Marschke, 2006. "International Knowledge Flows: Evidence from an Inventor-Firm Matched Data Set," NBER Working Papers 12692, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Ian Jewitt & Clare Leaver & Heski Bar-Isaac, 2007. "Information and Human Capital Management," Economics Series Working Papers 367, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
  3. Katharine Rockett, 2009. "Property Rights and Invention," Economics Discussion Papers 663, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
  4. Hvide, Hans K. & Kristiansen, Eirik Gaard, 2012. "Management of Knowledge Workers," IZA Discussion Papers 6609, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  5. Aloña Martiarena, 2012. "Mobility of Skills and Ideas," DRUID Working Papers 12-04, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
  6. Baltzopoulos, Apostolos & Braunerhjelm, Pontus & Tikoudis, Ioannis, 2012. "Spin-off: Individual, Firm, Industry and Regional Determinants," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 265, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
  7. Matt Marx & Lee Fleming, 2011. "Non-compete Agreements: Barriers to Entry…and Exit?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 12, pages 39-64 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Bram Timmermans & Ron Boschma, 2012. "The effect of intra- and inter-regional labour mobility on plant performance in Denmark: the significance of related labour inflows," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1213, Utrecht University, Section of Economic Geography, revised Jun 2012.
  9. Burak Dindaroglu, 2010. "Intra-Industry Knowledge Spillovers and Scientific Labor Mobility," Discussion Papers 10-01, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
  10. Baltzopoulos, Apostolos, 2009. "The Firm and the Region as Breeding Grounds for Entrepreneurs," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 189, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.

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