promoted access to knowledge for millions of people — increased the innovation output of recipient towns. To identify the … causal effect of Carnegie libraries on innovation, we use new data on city-level patenting and a novel control group: cities … that qualified to receive a library grant, applied for the program, received preliminary construction approval, but …

1999-2004 and measure innovation performance by the (value-adjusted) number of patent applications at the European Patent … firms as well as immobile workers on the innovation performance of their employer. Our main result is that mobile university … scientists contribute substantially more to innovation than R&D workers hired from other firms who, in turn, contribute slightly …