In this paper, we aim at re-assessing the undisputed positive relationship between innovation and economic growth by questioning the view that R&D (and formal knowledge in general) equates innovation and innovation equates regional growth. We rather propose that these linkages are strongly...

An establishment can improve its productivity by hiring workers from more productive establishments. Then, how important is worker reallocation for aggregate productivity growth? To study this question, I develop a general equilibrium model where knowledge transmits as workers reallocate from...

This paper studies the global synchronicity of technology and its impact on the economy. We employ dynamic factor analysis to decompose patent data in different digital technologies for various countries into global and country-specific factors. Our findings confirm the existence of global and...

There is a long-standing recognition that innovating firms often have higher employment growth. More recently, there is increasing understanding that innovation is concentrated among a small number of generally large firms. We contribute to this debate by showing that the innovation-employment...

Railroad access may accelerate technological progress in the industrial sector and induce structural change and urbanization - the two common features of modern economic development. By digitizing novel datasets of factories and railroad networks in late 19th- and early 20th-century Japan and...

Railroad access can accelerate the technological progress in the industrial sector and therefore induce structural change and urbanization, the two common features of modern economic growth. I examine this particular mechanism in the context of Japanese railroad network expansion and modern...