The Paper Trail of Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from Patent Interferences

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ganguli, Ina; Lin, Jeffrey; Reynolds, Nicholas
• 署名单位: University of Massachusetts System; University of Massachusetts Amherst; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Philadelphia; Brown University; Brown University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20180017
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 278-302
• 关键词: citations; geography; localization

摘要

We show evidence of localized knowledge spillovers using a new database of US patent interferences terminated between 1998 and 2014. Interferences resulted wizen two or more independent parties submitted identical claims of invention nearly simultaneously. Following the idea that inventors of identical inventions share common knowledge inputs, interferences provide a new method for measuring knowledge spillovers. Interfering inventors are 1.4 to 4.0 times more likely to live in the same local area than matched control pairs of inventors. They are also more geographically concentrated than citation-linked inventors. Our results emphasize geographic distance as a barrier to tacit knowledge flows.