Isolating Personal Knowledge Spillovers: Coinventor Deaths and Spatial Citation Differentials
American Economic Review: Insights
vol. 5,
no. 1, March 2023
(pp. 21-34)
Abstract
We propose a new method to estimate and isolate the localization of knowledge spillovers due to the physical presence of a person, using after-application but pre-grant deaths of differently located coinventors of the same patent. The approach estimates the differences in local citations between the deceased and still-living inventors at increasingly distant radii. Patents receive 26 percent fewer citations from within a radius of 20 miles around the deceased, relative to still-living coinventors. Differences attenuate with time and distance, are stronger when still-living coinventors live farther from the deceased, and hold for a subsample of possibly premature deaths.Citation
Balsmeier, Benjamin, Lee Fleming, and Sonja Lück. 2023. "Isolating Personal Knowledge Spillovers: Coinventor Deaths and Spatial Citation Differentials." American Economic Review: Insights, 5 (1): 21-34. DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20210275Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- O31 Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
- O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
- O34 Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
- R32 Other Spatial Production and Pricing Analysis