IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/nasm04/204.html

Knowledge Creation as a Square Dance on the Hilbert Cube

Author

Listed:
  • Masahisa Fujita
  • Marcus Berliant

Abstract

This paper presents a micro-model of knowledge creation and transfer in a small group of people. It is intended to contribute eventually to the development of microfoundations for aggregate models of knowledge externalities used in various literatures, such as those pertaining to endogenous growth theory, urban agglomeration and growth, organizational R&D and knowledge creation, and human capital accumulation. Our model incorporates two key aspects of the cooperative process of knowledge creation: (i) heterogeneity of people in their state of knowledge is essential for successful cooperation in the joint creation of new ideas, while (ii) the very process of cooperative knowledge creation affects the heterogeneity of people through the accumulation of knowledge in common. In the two person case, we show that the equilibrium process tends to result in the accumulation of too much knowledge in common compared to the most productive state. Unlike the two-person case, in the four person case we show that under certain conditions, the equilibrium process of knowledge creation by four persons may converge to the most productive state. Extensions of the basic model are discussed

Suggested Citation

  • Masahisa Fujita & Marcus Berliant, 2004. "Knowledge Creation as a Square Dance on the Hilbert Cube," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 204, Econometric Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecm:nasm04:204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.org/esNASM04/up.20528.1075221685.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
    2. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2001. "Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation, and the Life Cycle of Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1454-1477, December.
    3. Ajay Agrawal & Iain Cockburn & John McHale, 2003. "Gone But Not Forgotten: Labor Flows, Knowledge Spillovers, and Enduring Social Capital," NBER Working Papers 9950, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Keely, Louise C., 2003. "Exchanging good ideas," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 192-213, August.
    5. Boldrin,Michele & Levine,David K., 2010. "Against Intellectual Monopoly," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521127264, January.
    6. Romer, Paul M, 1990. "Endogenous Technological Change," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 71-102, October.
    7. Boyan Jovanovic & Rafael Rob, 1989. "The Growth and Diffusion of Knowledge," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(4), pages 569-582.
    8. Helsley, Robert W. & Strange, William C., 2004. "Knowledge barter in cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 327-345, September.
    9. Hildenbrand, W. & Kirman, A. P., 1976. "Introduction to Equilibrium Analysis," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 1, number 9780720436068 edited by Bliss, C. J. & Intriligator, M. D..
    10. Masahisa Fujita & Shlomo Weber, 2003. "Strategic Immigration Policies and Welfare in Heterogeneous Countries," KIER Working Papers 569, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    11. Fujita,Masahisa & Thisse,Jacques-François, 2013. "Economics of Agglomeration," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107001411, January.
    12. Berliant, Marcus & Reed III, Robert R. & Wang, Ping, 2006. "Knowledge exchange, matching, and agglomeration," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 69-95, July.
    13. Masahiko Aoki, 2013. "The Contingent Governance Of Teams: Analysis Of Institutional Complementarity," Chapters, in: Comparative Institutional Analysis, chapter 14, pages 230-249, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Larry E. Jones & Rodolfo Manuelli, 1990. "A Convex Model of Equilibrium Growth," NBER Working Papers 3241, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Auerswald, Philip & Kauffman, Stuart & Lobo, Jose & Shell, Karl, 2000. "The production recipes approach to modeling technological innovation: An application to learning by doing," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 389-450, March.
    16. Jones, Larry E & Manuelli, Rodolfo E, 1990. "A Convex Model of Equilibrium Growth: Theory and Policy Implications," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 1008-1038, October.
    17. Marcus Berliant & Masahisa Fujita, 2009. "Dynamics of knowledge creation and transfer: The two person case," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(2), pages 155-179, June.
    18. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    19. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcus Berliant & Masahisa Fujita, 2011. "The Dynamics of Knowledge Diversity and Economic Growth," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(4), pages 856-884, April.
    2. Marcus Berliant & Masahisa Fujita, 2009. "Dynamics of knowledge creation and transfer: The two person case," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(2), pages 155-179, June.
    3. Couture, Victor, 2015. "Knowledge spillovers in cities: An auction approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 668-698.
    4. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 1996. "The Poverty of Nations: A Quantitative Exploration," NBER Working Papers 5414, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    6. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    7. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:2:y:2002:i:1:p:1-15 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Aurélie LALANNE & Guillaume POUYANNE, 2012. "Ten years of metropolization in economics: a bibliometric approach (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2012-11, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    9. Ayres, Robert U, 2001. "The minimum complexity of endogenous growth models:," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 26(9), pages 817-838.
    10. Capolupo, Rosa, 2009. "The New Growth Theories and Their Empirics after Twenty Years," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-72.
    11. Thomas M. Steger, 2000. "Productive Consumption and Growth in Developing Countries," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(3), pages 365-375, October.
    12. Paul M. Romer, 1994. "The Origins of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 3-22, Winter.
    13. Rosa Capolupo, 2005. "THE NEW GROWTH THEORIES AND THEIR EMPIRICS, Discussion Paper in Economics, University of Glasgow, N. 2005-04 (http://www.gla.ac.uk/Acad/Economics," GE, Growth, Math methods 0506003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Labor- And Capital-Augmenting Technical Change," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 1-37, March.
    15. Klenow, Peter J. & Rodriguez-Clare, Andres, 2005. "Externalities and Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 817-861, Elsevier.
    16. Davis, Lewis S., 2003. "The division of labor and the growth of government," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 1217-1235, May.
    17. Stephen Turnovsky, 2000. "Growth in an Open Economy: Some Recent Developments," Discussion Papers in Economics at the University of Washington 0015, Department of Economics at the University of Washington.
    18. Duffy, John & Papageorgiou, Chris, 2000. "A Cross-Country Empirical Investigation of the Aggregate Production Function Specification," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 87-120, March.
    19. Nowak-Lehmann D., Felicitas, 2000. "Was there endogenous growth in Chile (1960 - 1998)? A test of the AK-model," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 7, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    20. Voosholz, Frauke, 2014. "A survey on modeling economic growth. With special interest on natural resource use," CAWM Discussion Papers 69, University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP).
    21. Jones, Larry E. & Manuelli, Rodolfo E., 1997. "The sources of growth," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 75-114, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecm:nasm04:204. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.