technological innovation. First, recent empirical studies purport to show relationships between bans on enforcing noncompete … agreements, increased employee movement, and increased innovation. We find that these studies misconstrue legal differences … contrast, Massachusetts’ enforcement of noncompetes purportedly stunted innovation in the Route 128 region near Boston. We show …

-level support for the notion that labor mobility stimulates overall innovation of a country or region due to knowledge transfer. …

Workers have different abilities in research, development and innovation (R&D&I) activities. Firms have different … “prospects for innovation”. Innovation is facilitated by matching innovators, i.e. workers that are specialized in R&D&I to firms … with good prospects for innovation. Aggregate productivity growth requires that firms with the best prospects for …

This paper explores the role of R&D worker mobility on innovation performance. As one main novelty, we employ churning … innovation through inter-firm knowledge spillovers and improved job-match quality up to certain threshold. The point when costs …

that reduce incentives to invest in new knowledge. Using a formal model of innovation we identify conditions where the … innovation benefits of job-hopping exceed the costs from reduced incentives to invest in human capital. These conditions likely …. Consistent with our model of innovation, we also find that outside of the computer industry, California's mobility rates are no …

California law that make non-compete agreements unenforceable. Consistent with our model of innovation, mobility rates outside of …