The development prospects of a poor country or region depend in part on its capacity for innovation. In turn, the productivity of its innovators, whom are often concentrated around urban centers, depends on their access to technological knowledge. The emigration of highly skilled individuals...

We examine how the spatial and social proximity of inventors affects access to knowledge, focusing especially on how the two forms of proximity interact. Employing patent citation data and using same-MSA and co-ethnicity as proxies for spatial and social proximity, respectively, we estimate a...