How large are spatial barriers to transferring knowledge? We analyze the international operations of multinational firms to answer this fundamental question. In our model firms can transfer bits of knowledge to their foreign affiliates in either embodied (traded intermediates) or disembodied...

While the cumulative nature of knowledge is recognized as central to economic growth, the microeconomic foundations of cumulativeness are less understood. This paper investigates the impact of a research-enhancing institution on cumulativeness, highlighting two effects. First, a selection effect...

Research on intellectual property has focused on formal legally recorded rights that we call deeded, most often measured by granted patents. Meanwhile, other "defacto" IP (mainly purposive secrecy and natural excludability) has become more important because of the increasing closeness of...

Commercializing knowledge involves transfer from discovering scientists to those who will develop it commercially. New codes and formulae describing discoveries develop slowly - with little incentive if value is low and many competing opportunities if high. Hence new knowledge remains naturally...

This paper directs attention at the globalization of knowledge and knowledge creation as the fundamental global driver of economic outcomes in today's information economy. It documents the globalization of knowledge and spread of scientific research from advanced to developing countries and...

The rate of regional growth of new knowledge in the field of nanotechnology, as measured by counts of articles and patents in the open-access digital library NanoBank, is shown to be positively affected both by the size of existing regional stocks of recorded knowledge in all scientific fields,...

What prevents the spread of information among coworkers, and which management practices facilitate workplace knowledge flows? We conducted a field experiment in a sales company, addressing these questions with three active treatments. (1) Encouraging workers to talk about their sales techniques...

This paper reports on the construction of a new dataset that combines data on trademark applications and registrations from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with data on firms from the U.S. Census Bureau. The resulting dataset allows tracking of various activity related to trademark use and...

What type of businesses do unions target for organizing? A dynamic model of the union organizing process is constructed to answer this question. A union monitors establishments in an industry to learn about their productivity, and decides which ones to organize and when. An establishment becomes...

This paper analyzes retirement saving and portfolio choice in the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands. While these countries enjoy roughly the same standard of living, they vary widely in their institutional organization of retirement income provisions. Building on extensions of the life...