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Ideas and Firm Dynamics When It Takes Two to Tango

Author

Listed:
  • Seula Kim
  • Jane Olmstead-Rumsey
  • Honghao Wang

Abstract

Teams of inventors now produce over 80 percent of U.S. patents, up from just 45 percent in 1976. Over the same period, inventor employment has become increasingly concentrated in large firms, rising six times more than overall employment concentration. To explain these trends, we develop a new model of endogenous team formation within firms and embed it in a general equilibrium model of the inventor labor market. Teams increase firms’ returns to scale by increasing the likelihood of productive matches between inventors. The value of these matches rises over time, possibly driven by increasing knowledge specialization. This causes large firms to expand and small firms to shrink in equilibrium, accounting for the observed increase in inventor employment concentration. Because firms do not internalize knowledge spillovers, there is misallocation of inventors across firms. The rise of team production amplifies this misallocation by a factor of six by reallocating inventors away from small firms that generate disproportionately large knowledge spillovers.

Suggested Citation

  • Seula Kim & Jane Olmstead-Rumsey & Honghao Wang, 2026. "Ideas and Firm Dynamics When It Takes Two to Tango," Working Papers 26-44, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:103815
    DOI: 10.21799/frbp.wp.2026.44
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Michael Greenstone & Richard Hornbeck & Enrico Moretti, 2010. "Identifying Agglomeration Spillovers: Evidence from Winners and Losers of Large Plant Openings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 536-598, June.
    2. Nicholas Bloom & Charles I. Jones & John Van Reenen & Michael Webb, 2020. "Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 1104-1144, April.
    3. David Argente & Sara Moreira & Ezra Oberfield & Venky Venkateswaran, 2025. "Scalable Expertise: How Standardization Drives Scale and Scope," NBER Working Papers 34160, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Akcigit, Ufuk & Caicedo Soler, Santiago & Miguelez, Ernest & Stantcheva, Stefanie & Sterzi, Valerio, 2018. "Dancing with the Stars: Innovation through Interactions," CEPR Discussion Papers 12819, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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