Technology Diffusion Through Worker Mobility

Score ↕	Year ↕	Title	Authors ↕	Theme ↕
10	1999	Localization of Knowledge and the Mobility of Engineers in Regional Networks core ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how engineer mobility across firms shapes the local diffusion of knowledge, which is central to your project. It also connects regional labor networks and patent citation spillovers to technology transfer, making it highly relevant for understanding mobility frictions and the geography of innovation. Knowledge, once generated, spills only imperfectly among firms and nations. We posit that since institutions and labor networks vary by region, there should be regional variations in the localization of spillovers. We investigate the relationship between the mobility of major patent holders and the localization of technological knowledge through the analysis of patent citations of important semiconductor innovations. We find that knowledge localization is specific to only certain regions (particularly Silicon Valley) and that the degree of localization varies across regions. By analyzing data on the interfirm mobility of patent holders, we empirically show that the interfirm mobility of...	Paul Almeida, Bruce Kogut
10	2010	Recruiting for Ideas: How Firms Exploit the Prior Inventions of New Hires core ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility as a mechanism of knowledge diffusion, showing how hiring inventors increases firms’ use of recruits’ prior ideas and how that knowledge spreads within the new firm. It speaks closely to the project’s core themes of worker mobility, invention spillovers, and the firm-level diffusion of tacit and codified knowledge over time. When firms recruit inventors, they acquire not only the use of their skills but also enhanced access to their stock of ideas. But do hiring firms actually increase their use of new recruits' prior inventions? Our estimates suggest they do, quite significantly in fact, by approximately 219% on average. However, this does not necessarily reflect widespread “learning by hiring.” In fact, we estimate that a recruit's exploitation of her own prior ideas accounts for almost half of the above effect, with much of the diffusion to others being limited to the recruit's immediate collaborative network. Furthermore, although one might expect the recruit's role to diminish rapidly as her tacit...	Jasjit Singh, Ajay Agrawal
10	2014	Equilibrium Imitation and Growth core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. The least productive agents in an economy can be vital in generating growth by spurring technology diffusion. We develop an analytically tractable model in which growth is created as a positive externality from risk taking by firms at the bottom of the productivity distribution imitating more productive firms. Heterogeneous firms choose to produce or pay a cost and search within the economy to upgrade their technology. Sustained growth comes from the feedback between the endogenously determined distribution of productivity, as evolved from past search decisions, and an optimal, forward-looking search policy. The growth rate depends on characteristics of the productivity distribution, with a...	Jesse Perla, Christopher Tonetti
10	2020	The Global Diffusion of Ideas core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. We provide a tractable, quantitatively‐oriented theory of innovation and technology diffusion to explore the role of international trade in the process of development. We model innovation and diffusion as a process involving the combination of new ideas with insights from other industries or countries. We provide conditions under which each country's equilibrium frontier of knowledge converges to a Fréchet distribution, and derive a system of differential equations describing the evolution of the scale parameters of these distributions, that is, countries' stocks of knowledge. The model remains tractable with many asymmetric countries and generates a rich set of predictions about how the...	Francisco Buera, Ezra Oberfield
10	2012	Productivity Spillovers Across Firms through Worker Mobility core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. Using matched firm-worker data from Danish manufacturing, we observe firm-to-firm worker movements and find that firms that hired workers from more productive firms experience productivity gains one year after the hiring. The productivity gains associated with hiring from more productive firms are equivalent to 0.35 percent per year for an average firm. Surviving a variety of statistical controls, these gains increase with education, tenure, and skill level of new hires, persist for several years after the hiring was done, and remain broadly similar for different industries and measures of productivity. Competing explanations for these gains, knowledge spillovers in particular, are...	Andrey Stoyanov, Nick Zubanov
10	2023	The Impact of Restricting Labor Mobility on Corporate Investment and Entrepreneurship core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. Abstract This paper examines how labor mobility restrictions like noncompete agreements affect firms’ investment decisions. Using matched employee-employer data from LinkedIn, I show that increases in the enforceability of noncompete agreements lead to widespread declines in employee departures, specifically in knowledge-intensive occupations. Established firms that rely more on these knowledge-intensive occupations increase their investment rate in physical capital. However, new firm entry in corresponding sectors declines. I provide evidence for different mechanisms to explain these patterns. Together, the findings show that labor frictions play an important role in investment decisions...	Jessica Jeffers
10	2016	Innovation vs. imitation and the evolution of productivity distributions core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. We develop a tractable dynamic model of productivity growth and technology spillovers that is consistent with the emergence of real world empirical productivity distributions. Firms can improve productivity by engaging in in-house R\\&D, or alternatively, by trying to imitate other firms' technologies, subject to the limits of their absorptive capacities. The outcome of both strategies is stochastic. The choice between in-house R\\&D and imitation is endogenous, and based on firms' profit maximization motive. Firms closer to the technological frontier face fewer imitation opportunities, and choose in-house R\\&D, while firms farther from the frontier try to imitate more productive...	Fabrizio Zilibotti, Michael König, Jan Lorenz
10	2021	Reconciling Models of Diffusion and Innovation: A Theory of the Productivity Distribution and Technology Frontier core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. We study how endogenous innovation and technology diffusion interact to determine the shape of the productivity distribution and generate aggregate growth. We model firms that choose to innovate, adopt technology, or produce with their existing technology. Costly adoption creates a spread between the best and worst technologies concurrently used to produce similar goods. The balance of adoption and innovation determines the shape of the distribution; innovation stretches the distribution, while adoption compresses it. On the balanced growth path, the aggregate growth rate equals the maximum growth rate of innovators. While innovation drives long‐run growth, changes in the adoption...	Jess Benhabib, Jesse Perla, Christopher Tonetti
10	2018	Dancing with the Stars: Innovation Through Interactions core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. An inventor's own knowledge is a key input in the innovation process. This knowledge can be built by interacting with and learning from others. This paper uses a new large-scale panel dataset on European inventors matched to their employers and patents. We document key empirical facts on inventors' productivity over the life cycle, inventors' research teams, and interactions with other inventors. Among others, most patents are the result of collaborative work. Interactions with better inventors are very strongly correlated with higher subsequent productivity. These facts motivate the main ingredients of our new innovation-led endogenous growth model, in which innovations are produced by...	Ufuk Akcigit, Santiago Caicedo, Ernest Miguélez, et al.
10	2020	Labour market mobility, knowledge diffusion and innovation core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. Abstract Utilising a unique Swedish matched employer–employee dataset, which has been pooled with firm-level patent application data, we provide new evidence that knowledge workers’ mobility has a positive and strongly significant impact on firm innovation output, as measured by firm patent applications. The effect is statistically and economically highly significant for knowledge workers who have previously worked in a patenting firm (the learning-by-hiring effect), whereas only limited impact could be detected for firms losing knowledge workers (the learning-by-diaspora effect). No effects were detected for inexperienced university graduates. Finally, the effect is more pronounced when...	Pontus Braunerhjelm, Ding Ding, Per Thulin
10	2023	Optimal Regulation of Noncompete Contracts core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. I study regulation of noncompete employment contracts, assessing the trade‐off between restricting worker mobility and encouraging firm investment. I develop an on‐the‐job search model in which firms and workers sign dynamic wage contracts with noncompete clauses and firms invest in their workers' general human capital. Employers use noncompete clauses to enforce buyout payments when their workers depart, ultimately extracting rent from future employers. This rent extraction is socially excessive, and restrictions on these clauses can improve efficiency. The optimal regulation policy is characterized. In an application to the managerial labor market using a novel contract data set, I find...	Liyan Shi
10	2018	Production and Learning in Teams core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. The effect of coworkers on the learning and the productivity of an individual is measured combining theory and data. The theory is a frictional equilibrium model of the labor market in which production and the accumulation of human capital of an individual are allowed to depend on the human capital of coworkers. The data is a matched employer-employee dataset of US firms and workers. The measured production function is supermodular. The measured human capital function is non-linear: Workers catch-up to more knowledgeable coworkers, but are not dragged-down by less knowledgeable ones. The market equilibrium features a pattern of sorting of coworkers across teams that is inefficiently...	Kyle Herkenhoff, Jeremy Lise, Guido Menzio, et al.
10	2023	Innovation, Inventor Mobility, and the Enforceability of Noncompete Agreements core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. Worker mobility across firms can enhance innovation by spreading knowledge, but such mobility may also hinder innovation by making firms reluctant to invest in R&D.A common way that firms limit workers' mobility is with noncompete agreements (NCAs).We examine how the legal enforceability of NCAs affects innovation, as measured by patenting, using data on every statelevel NCA enforceability change between 1991-2014.We find that making NCAs easier to enforce ("stricter" enforceability) substantially reduces the rate of patenting: an average-sized increase in NCA enforceability leads a state to have 16-19% fewer citation-weighted patents over the following 10 years.This effect reflects a true...	Matthew Johnson, Michael Lipsitz, Alison Pei
10	2017	INNOVATION AND GROWTH WITH FINANCIAL, AND OTHER, FRICTIONS core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. The generation of ideas and their implementation are crucial for economic performance. We study this in a model of endogenous growth, where productivity increases with innovation and where the exchange of ideas (technology transfer) allows those with comparative advantage to implement them. Search, bargaining, and commitment frictions impede the idea market, however, reducing efficiency and growth. We characterize optimal policies involving subsidies to innovative and entrepreneurial activity, given both knowledge and search externalities. The role of liquidity is discussed. We show intermediation helps by financing more transactions with fewer assets and, more subtly, by ameliorating...	Jonathan Chiu, Césaire Meh, Randall Wright
10	2015	Training and Search On the Job core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. The paper studies human capital accumulation over workers' careers in an on the job search setting with heterogenous firms. In renegotiation proof employment contracts, more productive firms provide more training. Both general and specific training induce higher wages within jobs, and with future employers, even conditional on the future employer type. Because matches do not internalize the specific capital loss from employer changes, specific human capital can be over-accumulated, more so in low type firms. While validating the Acemoglu and Pischke (1999) mechanisms, the analysis nevertheless arrives at the opposite conclusion: That increased labor market friction reduces training in...	Rasmus Lentz, Nicolas Roys
10	2006	Wage Bargaining with On-the-Job Search: Theory and Evidence core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. Most applications of Nash bargaining over wages ignore between-employer competition for labor services and attribute all of the workers' rent to their bargaining power. In this paper, we write and estimate an equilibrium model with strategic wage bargaining and on-the-job search and use it to take another look at the determinants of wages in France. There are three essential determinants of wages in our model: productivity, competition between employers resulting from on-the-job search, and the workers' bargaining power. We find that between-firm competition matters a lot in the determination of wages, because it is quantitatively more important than wage bargaining à la Nash in raising...	Pierre Cahuc, Fabien Postel‐Vinay, Jean‐Marc Robin
10	2014	Optimal Employment Contracts with Hidden Search core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. In this paper I explore optimal employment contract design in a random search framework, where workers search on and off the job for employment opportunities similar to that of The worker determines the frequency by which employment opportunities arrive through a costly choice of search intensity, which is unobserved by the firm and cannot be directly contracted upon. Firms differ in productivity by which they employ workers. Firms compete over workers in terms of utility promises in a fashion otherwise similar to that of As in The analysis establishes existence, uniqueness and provides characterization of the core mechanism. The paper applies the framework to the analysis of firm provided...	Rasmus Lentz
10	2022	The Global Race for Talent: Brain Drain, Knowledge Transfer, and Growth core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. How does inventors’ migration affect international talent allocation, knowledge diffusion, and productivity growth? To answer this question, I build a novel two-country innovation-led endogenous growth model, where heterogeneous inventors produce innovations, learn from others, and make dynamic migration and return decisions. Migrants interact with individuals at origin and destination, diffusing knowledge within and across countries. To quantify this framework, I construct a micro-level dataset of migrant inventors on the US-EU corridor from patent data and document that (i) gross migration is asymmetric, with brain drain (net emigration) from the EU to the US; (ii) migrants increase their...	Marta Prato
10	2017	Productivity spillovers through labor mobility in search equilibrium core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. This paper proposes an explicit model of spillovers through labor flows in a framework with search frictions. Firms can choose to innovate or to imitate by hiring a worker from a firm that has already innovated. We show that if innovating firms can commit to long-term wage contracts with their workers, productivity spillovers are fully internalized. If firms cannot commit to long-term wage contracts, there is too little innovation and too much imitation in equilibrium. Our model is tractable and allows us to analyze welfare effects of various policies in the limited commitment case. We find that subsidizing innovation and taxing imitation improves welfare. Moreover, allowing innovating...	Tom‐Reiel Heggedal, Espen R. Moen, Edgar Preugschat
10	2017	Knowledge Creation and Diffusion with Limited Appropriation core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. Innovation is central to economic growth, but so is the propagation diffusion of new knowledge. Such is the finding of recent papers that model the interaction between these two forces. Absent in this literature are two key elements that are the focus of this paper. First, we consider the role of frictions in matching (innovators and imitators) mediating the process of knowledge transmission. Secondly, while most of the recent literature has focused on the case where all surplus from knowledge transmission is captured by the recipient (e.g. pure imitation), we consider all ranges of possible shares (the share that the innovators/recipients can appropriate) and their impact on growth. In a...	Liyan Shi, Hugo A. Hopenhayn
10	2021	The Macro Impact of Noncompete Contracts core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. This paper studies the macro impact of noncompete employment contracts, assessing the trade-off between restricting worker mobility and encouraging firm investment. I develop an on-the-job search model in which firms and workers sign dynamic wage contracts with noncompete clauses and _firms invest in their worker's general human capital. The incumbent employers use noncompete clauses to enforce buyout payments when their workers depart, ultimately extracting rent from future employers. The model implies that this rent extraction is socially excessive and restrictions on these clauses can improve efficiency. I quantitatively evaluate the model in the managerial labor market, using a novel...	Liyan Shi
10	2023	Inventor Mobility, Knowledge Diffusion, and Growth core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. No abstract available.	Yasutaka Koike-Mori, Toshitaka Maruyama, Koki Okumura
10	2026	The Role of Workers in Knowledge Diffusion Across Firms core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. This paper was updated in April 2026 (v5).	Anders Åkerman, Kerstin Holzheu
10	2005	Is Mobility of Technical Personnel a Source of R&D Spillovers? core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. No abstract available.	Moen
10	2015	Does the Mobility of R&D Labor Increase Innovation? core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. No abstract available.	Kaiser, Kongsted, Ronde
10	2022	Entrepreneurship through employee mobility, innovation, and growth core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. Firm-level productivity differences are big and largely ascribed to ex-ante heterogeneity in the entrepreneurs' growth potential at birth. Where do these ex-ante differences come from, and what can the policy do to encourage the entry of high-growth entrepreneurs? I study empirically and by means of a quantitative growth model the spinout firms: the firms founded by former employees of the incumbent firms. By focusing on innovating spinouts identified through the inventor mobility in the patent data, I document that spinout entrants significantly outperform regular entrants throughout their life. Firms with a bigger technological lead spawn more successful spinouts. Building on these...	Salomé Baslandze
10	2022	Locked In? The Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete and the Careers of High-Tech Workers core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. No abstract available.	Balasubramanian, Chang, Sakakibara, et al.
10	2023	Dynamic Monopsony with Large Firms and an Application to Non-Competes core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. No abstract available.	Gottfries, Jarosch
10	2019	What Drives Differences in Management Practices? core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. No abstract available.	Bloom, Brynjolfsson, Foster, et al.
10	2025	Measuring the Characteristics and Employment Dynamics of US Inventors core Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. No abstract available.	Akcigit, Goldschlag
10	2022	Firm and Worker Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market core ↗ Seed paper — directly relevant by definition. This paper integrates the classic theory of firm boundaries, through span of control or taste for variety, into a model of the labor market with random matching and on‐the‐job search. Firms choose when to enter and exit, whether to create vacancies or destroy jobs in response to shocks, and Bertrand‐compete to hire and retain workers. Tractability is obtained by proving that, under a parsimonious set of assumptions, all worker and firm decisions are characterized by their joint surplus, which in turn only depends on firm productivity and size. The job ladder in marginal surplus that emerges in equilibrium determines net poaching patterns by firm characteristics that are in line with the...	Adrien Bilal, Niklas Engbom, Simon Mongey, et al.
8	1993	Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations core ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge diffuses across locations using patent citations, which is directly relevant to understanding technology spillovers and the channels through which ideas move between firms and regions. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions themselves, but it provides important evidence on the geographic localization of knowledge spillovers that such mobility constraints may shape. We compare the geographic location of patent citations to those of the cited patents, as evidence of the extent to which knowledge spillovers are geographically localized. We find that citations to U.S. patents are more likely to come from the U.S., and more likely to come from the same state and SMSA as the cited patents than one would expect based only on the preexisting concentration of related research activity. These effects are particularly significant at the local (SMSA) level, and are particularly apparent in early citations.	Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg, Rebecca Henderson
8	2014	Knowledge Growth and the Allocation of Time core ↗ This paper is closely related because it models knowledge diffusion and growth through agents allocating time to search for new ideas via interaction with others, which is a core mechanism in worker-based technology transfer. However, it is more about endogenous learning and search in a general growth model than about labor market frictions, mobility constraints, or firm-level hiring and retention policies. We analyze a model economy with many agents, each with a different productivity level. Agents divide their time between two activities: producing goods with the production-related knowledge they already have and interacting with others in search of new, productivity-increasing ideas. These choices jointly determine the economy’s current production level and its rate of learning and real growth. We construct the balanced growth path for this economy. We also study the allocation chosen by an idealized planner who takes into account and internalizes the external benefits of search. Finally, we provide three examples of alternative learning technologies and show that the properties of...	Robert E. Lucas, Benjamin Moll
8	2020	Ten Facts on Declining Business Dynamism and Lessons from Endogenous Growth Theory core ↗ This paper is closely related because it explicitly centers on declining knowledge diffusion between frontier and laggard firms as a potential driver of business dynamism, which is directly aligned with your project’s focus on technology and knowledge spillovers. While it is more about aggregate growth, markups, and competition than worker mobility per se, it provides useful theoretical context for how frictions in diffusion can shape productivity, innovation, and firm dynamics. In this paper, we review the literature on declining business dynamism and its implications in the United States and propose a unifying theory to analyze the symptoms and the potential causes of this decline. We first highlight 10 pronounced stylized facts related to declining business dynamism documented in the literature and discuss some of the existing attempts to explain them. We then describe a theoretical framework of endogenous markups, innovation, and competition that can potentially speak to all of these facts jointly. We next explore some theoretical predictions of this framework, which are shaped by two interacting forces: a composition effect that determines the market...	Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates
7	2010	An Exploration of Technology Diffusion core ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion across countries and quantifies how adoption lags contribute to income differences, which speaks to the broader question of how knowledge spreads and affects productivity. However, it focuses on cross-country technology adoption rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level mechanisms of knowledge transfer. We develop a model that, at the aggregate level, is similar to the one-sector neoclassical growth model; at the disaggregate level, it has implications for the path of observable measures of technology adoption. We estimate it using data on the diffusion of 15 technologies in 166 countries over the last two centuries. Our results reveal that, on average, countries have adopted technologies 45 years after their invention. There is substantial variation across technologies and countries. Newer technologies have been adopted faster than old ones. The cross-country variation in the adoption of technologies accounts for at least 25 percent of per capita income differences. (JEL O33, O41, O47)	Diego Comín, Bart Hobijn
6	2018	Innovation, Reallocation, and Growth core ↗ This paper is relevant because it studies firm-level innovation, R&D, and the reallocation of skilled labor across firms, which connects to how labor market frictions and firm dynamics shape knowledge production. However, it does not focus on worker mobility, inventor movement, non-compete agreements, or direct knowledge diffusion across firms, so it is more of a related background paper than a core match. We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth, and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between high- and low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the parameters of the model using US Census microdata on firm-level output, R&D, and patenting. The model provides a good fit to the dynamics of firm entry and exit, output, and R&D. Taxing the continued operation of incumbents can lead to sizable gains (of the order of 1.4 percent improvement in welfare) by encouraging exit of less productive firms and freeing up skilled labor to be used for R&D by high-type incumbents...	Daron Acemoğlu, Ufuk Akcigit, Harun Alp, et al.
6	2001	Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function core ↗ This survey is relevant because matching functions and search frictions are central to understanding worker mobility, hiring, and the transmission of knowledge across firms in labor markets. However, it is more of a general labor search/matching review than a paper directly focused on inventor mobility, non-competes, or technology diffusion. This paper surveys the microfoundations, empirical evidence, and estimation issues underlying the aggregate matching function. There is no consensus yet on microfoundations but one is emerging on estimation. An aggregate, constant returns, Cobb-Douglas matching function with hires as a function of vacancies and unemployment has been successfully estimated for several countries. Recent work has utilized disaggregated data to go beyond aggregate estimates, with many refinements and suggestions for future research. The paper discusses spatial aggregation issues, and implications of on-the-job search and of the timing of stocks and flows for estimated matching functions.	Bárbara Petrongolo, Christopher A. Pissarides
6	2018	Ranking Firms Using Revealed Preference* core ↗ This paper is relevant because it studies employer-to-employer transitions and uses worker mobility data to infer firm attractiveness and compensating differentials, which connects to labor market frictions and firm-level hiring/retention dynamics. However, it is more about ranking firms from revealed preferences and earnings differences than about technology diffusion, knowledge spillovers, or the causal impact of mobility restrictions on innovation and productivity. This article estimates workers' preferences for firms by studying the structure of employer-to-employer transitions in U.S. administrative data. The article uses a tool from numerical linear algebra to measure the central tendency of worker flows, which is closely related to the ranking of firms revealed by workers' choices. There is evidence for compensating differentials when workers systematically move to lower-paying firms in a way that cannot be accounted for by layoffs or differences in recruiting intensity. The estimates suggest that compensating differentials account for over half of the firm component of the variance of earnings.	Isaac Sorkin
6	2005	Growth and Ideas core ↗ This chapter is highly relevant as background on the economics of ideas, nonrivalry, and increasing returns, which are central to understanding knowledge diffusion and growth. However, it does not directly focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level mechanisms through which ideas move across firms. Ideas are different from nearly all other economic goods in that they are nonrivalrous. This nonrivalry implies that production possibilities are likely to be characterized by increasing returns to scale, an insight that has profound implications for economic growth. The purpose of this chapter is to explore these implications. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.	Charles I. Jones
6	2002	Equilibrium Wage Dispersion with Worker and Employer Heterogeneity core ↗ This paper is relevant because it uses an equilibrium on-the-job search model with matching frictions and heterogeneous workers and firms, which connects directly to how labor market frictions shape worker mobility and wage dispersion. However, it focuses more on wage inequality decomposition than on technology diffusion, inventor mobility, or the transmission of knowledge across firms, so it is supportive background rather than a core match. We construct and estimate an equilibrium search model with on–the–job–search. Firms make take–it–or–leave–it wage offers to workers conditional on their characteristics and they can respond to the outside job offers received by their employees. Unobserved worker productive heterogeneity is introduced in the form of cross–worker differences in a “competence” parameter. On the other side of the market, firms also are heterogeneous with respect to their marginal productivity of labor. The model delivers a theory of steady–state wage dispersion driven by heterogenous worker abilities and firm productivities, as well as by matching frictions. The structural model is estimated using matched...	Fabien Postel‐Vinay, Jean‐Marc Robin
5	1962	Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention core ↗ This paper is relevant as classic background on the economics of invention and knowledge production, which is central to understanding how innovation is generated and valued. However, the abstract does not specifically address worker mobility, labor market frictions, spillovers through labor movement, or the firm-level mechanisms that are the core focus of the project. Invention is here interpreted broadly as the production of knowledge. From the viewpoint of welfare economics, the determination of optimal resource allocation for invention will depend on the technological characteristics of the invention process and the nature of the market for knowledge.	Kenneth J. Arrow
5	1992	A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction core ↗ This paper is relevant as background because it studies endogenous growth and innovation diffusion through creative destruction, which is conceptually related to how new knowledge displaces old technologies. However, it does not focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or the movement of skilled workers as the mechanism for technology transfer, so it is only indirectly connected to the project. This paper develops a model based on Schumpeter's process of creative destruction. It departs from existing models of endogenous growth in emphasizing obsolescence of old technologies induced by the accumulation of knowledge and the resulting process or industrial innovations. This has both positive and normative implications for growth. In positive terms, the prospect of a high level of research in the future can deter research today by threatening the fruits of that research with rapid obsolescence. In normative terms, obsolescence creates a negative externality from innovations, and hence a tendency for laissez-faire economies to generate too many innovations, i.e too much growth. This...	Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt
5	1998	Wage Differentials, Employer Size, and Unemployment core ↗ This paper is relevant as background because it studies labor market search frictions, wage dispersion, and on-the-job search, all of which can shape worker mobility and the transmission of knowledge across firms. However, it does not directly address technology diffusion, inventor mobility, non-competes, or firm-level spillovers, so its connection to the project is indirect. The unique equilibrium solution to a game in which a continuum of individual employers choose permanent wage offers and a continuum of workers search by sequentially sampling from the set of offers is characterized. Wage dispersion is a robust outcome provided that workers search while employed as well as when unemployed. The unique nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of wage offers is constructed for three cases: (1) identical workers and employers, (2) identical employers and an atomless distribution of worker supply prices, and (3) identical workers and an atomless distribution of job productivities. Copyright 1998 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the...	Kenneth Burdett, Dale T. Mortensen
5	1997	Research, Patenting, and Technological Change core ↗ This paper is relevant as a model of technological change and R&D-driven innovation, which connects to the broader question of how knowledge is created and diffused in the economy. However, it does not focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, firm-to-firm spillovers, or policies like non-competes that are central to the project. This paper develops a search-theoretic model of technological change to explain why both patenting and the growth of productivity have remained roughly constant while research employment in the United States has increased by a factor of six over the past four decades. In the model, researchers sample from probability distributions determining the efficiency of potential new production techniques. Technological breakthroughs, resulting in patents, become increasingly hard to find as the level of technology advances. Given certain restrictions on the search distributions, the equilibrium of the model replicates the U.S. time-series pattern of research, patenting, and productivity.	Samuel Kortum
5	2007	Selection, Growth, and the Size Distribution of Firms core ↗ This paper is relevant as background because it studies how productivity improvements, imitation, and firm selection shape aggregate productivity growth and the size distribution of firms. It does not focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or knowledge diffusion through inventor or engineer movement, so it is only indirectly related to the project’s core mechanisms. This paper describes an analytically tractable model of balanced growth that is consistent with the observed size distribution of Þrms. Growth is the result of idiosyncratic Þrm productivity improvements, selection of successful Þrms, and imitation by entrants. Selection tends to improve aggregate productivity at a fast rate if entry and imitation are easy. The empirical phenomenon of Zipfs law can be interpreted to mean that entry costs are high or that imitation is difficult, or both. The small size of entrants indicates that imitation must be difficult. A calibration based on U.S. data suggests that about half of output growth can be attributed to selection. But the implied variance of...	Erzo G. J. Luttmer
5	2008	Ideas and Growth core ↗ This paper is relevant as a broad background piece on endogenous technological change and the role of individual knowledge in aggregate growth. However, it does not appear to focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or the diffusion of ideas across firms through hiring and separation decisions. This paper introduces and partially develops a new model of endogenous technological change, viewed as the product of a class of problem‐solving producers. The model, based on earlier work by Eaton and Kortum, is built up from the premise that all knowledge resides in the head of some individual person and the knowledge of a firm, or economy, or any group of people is simply the knowledge of the individuals that comprise it. The model is applied to an economy with a cohort structure. A calibration of the model using cross‐section earnings data, in addition to aggregate GDP growth, is considered.	Robert E. Lucas
4	1991	Trade, knowledge spillovers, and growth core ↗ This paper is related to knowledge diffusion and endogenous growth, which are part of the broader project on how ideas spread and affect productivity. However, it focuses on international trade as the channel for spillovers rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention decisions. Endogenous growth of trading countries has been studied with international knowledge spillovers. These spillovers have typically been assumed to take place automatically. We study the growth performance of a small country in which scientific and technological knowledge flows from abroad are related to its extent of foreign trade. In this environment trade generates an externality that coexists with the externality of domestic innovation. The latter leads to too little innovation. We show that policies that reduce the extent of international trade strengthen the undersupply of innovation. Consequently the economy grows too slow for both reasons. In fact, some trade promoting policies reduce...	Gene M. Grossman, Elhanan Helpman
4	1990	On the Efficiency of Matching and Related Models of Search and Unemployment core ↗ This paper is about matching and search frictions in labor markets, which are conceptually relevant to worker mobility and labor market frictions in the project. However, it focuses on unemployment and allocative efficiency in matching-bargaining models rather than on knowledge diffusion, inventor mobility, non-competes, or productivity spillovers. This paper describes a simple framework for evaluating the allocative performance of economies characterized by trading frictions and unemployment. This framework integrates the normative results of earlier Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides bilateral matching-bargaining models of trade coordination and price-setting, and consists of a set of general conditions for constrained Pareto efficient resource allocation that are applicable to conventional natural rate models. To illustrate, several conventional models of the labour market are reformulated as matching-bargaining problems and analyzed using this framework.	Arthur J. Hosios
2	1990	Increasing Returns and Economic Geography core ↗ This paper is about economic geography, agglomeration, and how transport costs and scale economies can concentrate manufacturing across regions. It is only indirectly related to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion because it does not focus on labor market frictions, inventor movement, or technology spillovers across firms. This paper develops a two-region, two-sector general equilibriun model of location. The location of agricultural production is fixed, but ionopolistcally competitive manufacturing finns choose their location to maximize profits. If transportation costs are high, returns to scale weak, and the share of spending on manufactured goods low, the incentive to produce close to the market leads to an equal division of manufacturing between the regions. With lower transport costs, stronger scale economies, or a higher manufacturing share, circular causation sets in: the more manufacturing is located in one region, the larger that region's share of demand, and this provides an incentive to locate...	Paúl Krugman
2	2021	Income and Wealth Distribution in Macroeconomics: A Continuous-Time Approach core ↗ This paper is about heterogeneous-agent macroeconomics, wealth distribution, and computational methods for solving Aiyagari-Bewley-Huggett models, rather than worker mobility or knowledge diffusion. It may provide useful background on labor-market heterogeneity and savings behavior, but it does not address non-competes, inventor mobility, firm-to-firm spillovers, or technology transfer mechanisms. Abstract We recast the Aiyagari–Bewley–Huggett model of income and wealth distribution in continuous time. This workhorse model—as well as heterogeneous agent models more generally—then boils down to a system of partial differential equations, a fact we take advantage of to make two types of contributions. First, a number of new theoretical results: (1) an analytic characterization of the consumption and saving behaviour of the poor, particularly their marginal propensities to consume; (2) a closed-form solution for the wealth distribution in a special case with two income types; (3) a proof that there is a unique stationary equilibrium if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is...	Yves Achdou, Jiequn Han, Jean‐Michel Lasry, et al.	Other
10	2003	Learning–by–Hiring: When Is Mobility More Likely to Facilitate Interfirm Knowledge Transfer? ↗ This paper is directly about worker mobility as a mechanism for interfirm knowledge transfer, focusing on engineers moving across firms and the conditions under which hiring generates learning-by-hiring. It speaks to core themes in the project by analyzing how firm characteristics and the technological distance of hired workers shape knowledge diffusion and innovation outcomes. To investigate the conditions under which learning-by-hiring (or the acquisition of knowledge through the hiring of experts from other firms) is more likely, we study the patenting activities of engineers who moved from United States (U.S.) firms to non-U.S. firms. Statistical findings from negative binomial regressions show that mobility is more likely to result in interfirm knowledge transfer when (1) the hiring firm is less path dependent, (2) the hired engineers possess technological expertise distant from that of the hiring firm, and (3) the hired engineers work in noncore technological areas in their new firm. In addition, the results support the idea that domestic mobility and...	Jaeyong Song, Paul Almeida, Geraldine Wu
10	2009	Mobility of skilled workers and co-invention networks: an anatomy of localized knowledge flows ↗ This paper is directly about how mobile skilled workers and inventors transmit knowledge across firms and how co-invention networks shape localized knowledge flows. It speaks closely to the project’s core themes of inventor mobility, technology diffusion, spatial frictions, and the interpretation of knowledge spillovers as arising from worker movement rather than pure externalities. This article illustrates the contribution of mobile inventors and networks of inventors to \nthe diffusion of knowledge across firms and within cities or states. It is based upon an \noriginal data set on US inventors’ patent applications at the European Patent Office, \nin the fields of drugs, biotechnology and organic chemistry. The study combines the \nmethodology originally proposed by Jaffe et al. (1993, Quarterly Journal of Economics, \n108: 577–598) with tools from social network analysis, in order to evaluate extent of \nthe localization of knowledge flows, as measured by patent citations. After controlling \nfor inventors’ mobility and for the resulting co-invention network, the...	Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni
10	1996	Star scientists and institutional transformation: Patterns of invention and innovation in the formation of the biotechnology industry ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how star scientists transmit knowledge to firms and how their mobility, collaboration, and institutional ties shape the diffusion and commercialization of biotechnology. It also links worker-scientist movement and firm collaboration to downstream innovation, product development, and employment, which is central to understanding knowledge spillovers and growth. The most productive ("star") bioscientists had intellectual human capital of extraordinary scientific and pecuniary value for some 10-15 years after Cohen and Boyer's 1973 founding discovery for biotechnology [Cohen, S., Chang, A., Boyer, H. & Helling, R. (1973) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 70, 3240-3244]. This extraordinary value was due to the union of still scarce knowledge of the new research techniques and genius and vision to apply them in novel, valuable ways. As in other sciences, star bioscientists were very protective of their techniques, ideas, and discoveries in the early years of the revolution, tending to collaborate more within their own institution, which slowed diffusion to...	Lynne G. Zucker, Michael R. Darby
10	1985	How Rapidly Does New Industrial Technology Leak Out? ↗ This paper is directly about how industrial technology leaks across firms and how quickly rivals learn new product and process information, which is central to technology diffusion through labor and knowledge spillovers. Its implications for innovation incentives and policies to stem technology outflow also align closely with the project’s focus on frictions that affect the rate and direction of knowledge diffusion. There have been no systematic empirical studies of the speed at which various kinds of technological information leak out to rival firms. To help fill this gap, data were obtained from 100 American firms. According to the results, information concerning development decisions is generally in the hands of rivals within about 12 to 18 months, on the average, and information concerning the detailed nature and operation of a new product or process generally leaks out within about a year. These results have important implications both for incentives for innovation and for public policies aimed at stemming the outflow of technology.	Edwin Mansfield
10	2009	Mobility, Skills, and the Michigan Non-Compete Experiment ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how non-compete enforcement affects employee mobility, especially for inventors and workers with firm-specific skills. It provides credible causal evidence on a key labor market friction that shapes knowledge diffusion across firms, which is central to the project. Whereas a number of studies have considered the implications of employee mobility, comparatively little research has considered institutional factors governing the ability of employees to move from one firm to another. This paper explores a legal constraint on mobility—employee non-compete agreements—by exploiting Michigan's apparently inadvertent 1985 reversal of its non-compete enforcement policy as a natural experiment. Using a differences-in-differences approach, and controlling for changes in the auto industry central to Michigan's economy, we find that the enforcement of non-competes indeed attenuates mobility. Moreover, non-compete enforcement decreases mobility more sharply for...	Matt Marx, Deborah Strumsky, Lee Fleming
10	2006	Job-Hopping in Silicon Valley: Some Evidence Concerning the Microfoundations of a High-Technology Cluster ↗ This paper is directly about worker mobility as a mechanism for technology diffusion in high-tech clusters, exactly matching the project’s core focus on job-hopping, knowledge transfer, and innovation. It also highlights the role of noncompete enforceability in California as a labor market friction affecting mobility rates, making it highly relevant to policy and aggregate innovation questions. Observers of Silicon Valley's computer cluster report that employees move rapidly between competing firms, but evidence supporting this claim is scarce. Job-hopping is important in computer clusters because it facilitates the reallocation of talent and resources toward firms with superior innovations. Using new data on labor mobility, we find higher rates of job-hopping for college-educated men in Silicon Valley's computer industry than in computer clusters located out of the state. Mobility rates in other California computer clusters are similar to Silicon Valley's, suggesting some role for features of California law that make noncompete agreements unenforceable. Consistent with our model...	Bruce Fallick, Charles A. Fleischman, James B. Rebitzer
10	2016	Taxation and the International Mobility of Inventors ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility and how policy-induced frictions created by taxation affect the international movement of highly skilled workers who generate and transfer knowledge. It is highly relevant to the project’s focus on how worker mobility shapes technology diffusion, firm R&D decisions, and the allocation of inventors across countries and multinational firms. We study the effect of top tax rates on “superstar” inventors' international mobility since 1977, using panel data on inventors from the US and European Patent Offices. We exploit the differential impact of changes in top tax rates on inventors of different qualities. Superstar inventors' location choices are significantly affected by top tax rates. In our preferred specification, the elasticity to the net-of-tax rate of the number of domestic superstar inventors is around 0.03, while that of foreign superstar inventors is around 1. These elasticities are larger for inventors in multinational companies. An inventor is less sensitive to taxes in a country if his company performs a higher...	Ufuk Akcigit, Salomé Baslandze, Stefanie Stantcheva
10	1998	The Legal Infrastructure of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, and Covenants Not to Compete ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about non-compete covenants and the legal infrastructure of high-tech industrial districts, which are central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Silicon Valley and Route 128 are classic cases for how labor-market institutions shape technology transfer, entrepreneurial spillovers, and regional innovation dynamics. No abstract available.	Ronald J. Gilson
10	2009	Reputations for toughness in patent enforcement: implications for knowledge spillovers via inventor mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a channel of knowledge spillovers and examines how firms can reduce diffusion through patent enforcement. It also speaks to firm strategies, labor-market frictions, and the impact of mobility-related policies on the spread of knowledge within an industry. Abstract ‘Job hopping’ by engineers and scientists is widely heralded as an important channel for knowledge spillovers within industries. Far less is known, however, about the actions firms take to reduce the outward flow of knowledge through markets for skilled labor. This study investigates the efficacy of a lever that has received little research attention: corporate reputations for toughness in patent enforcement. Drawing on unique data on enforcement activity, intra‐industry inventor mobility, and patent citations in the U.S. semiconductor industry, we find that a firm's litigiousness significantly reduces spillovers otherwise anticipated from departures of employee inventors...	Rajshree Agarwal, Martin Ganco, Rosemarie Ham Ziedonis
10	2019	The role of transportation speed in facilitating high skilled teamwork across cities ↗ This paper is directly about how reducing mobility frictions through faster transportation facilitates face-to-face interaction, knowledge diffusion, and skilled worker migration across cities. Its evidence on higher productivity, new coauthor formation, and migration of scientists via HSR maps closely to the project’s core themes of worker mobility, inventor/skill spillovers, and the aggregate effects of lower movement costs on innovation. Abstract High skilled workers gain from face to face interactions. If the skilled can move at higher speeds, then knowledge diffusion and idea spillovers are more likely to reach greater distances. This paper measures the knowledge creation consequences associated with the construction of China's high speed rail (HSR) network that connects mega cities, that feature the nation's best universities, to secondary cities. Since bullet trains reduce cross-city commute times, they reduce the cost of face-to-face interactions between skilled workers who work in different cities. Using a database listing research paper publication and citations, we document a complementarity effect between knowledge...	Xiaofang Dong, Siqi Zheng, Matthew E. Kahn
10	2008	International labor mobility and knowledge flow externalities ↗ [Title only] This title is directly aligned with the project’s core interest in how worker mobility transmits knowledge across firms and borders, making it highly relevant. The phrase "knowledge flow externalities" also suggests analysis of spillovers from labor movement, which maps closely to the themes of diffusion, frictions, and aggregate innovation effects. No abstract available.	Alexander Oettl, Ajay Agrawal
10	2007	Tracing mobile inventors—The causality between inventor mobility and inventor productivity ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a driver of productivity and knowledge acquisition, which is central to understanding how worker movement diffuses technology across firms. It also addresses the two-way causality between mobility and productivity, an important mechanism for evaluating labor market frictions and their effects on innovation and knowledge spillovers. This paper analyses the causality between inventor productivity and inventor mobility. The results show that the level of education has no influence on inventor productivity. Making use of external sources of knowledge, on the contrary, has a significant effect on productivity. Finally, firm size has a positive impact on productivity. Firm size also influences inventor mobility, although negatively. Whereas existing research implicitly assumes causality to point in one direction, this study ex ante allows for a simultaneous relationship. To deal with the expected endogeneity problem, instrumental variables techniques (IVREG and IVPROBIT) will be employed. Results show that mobile inventors...	Karin Hoisl
10	1998	The Legal Infrastructure of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, and Covenants Not to Compete This paper is directly on point because it studies how covenants not to compete and employee mobility shape knowledge spillovers, startup formation, and the performance of high-tech industrial districts. It also compares California and Massachusetts to show how legal restrictions on worker movement affect diffusion of technology and firm-level outcomes, which is central to the project’s focus on mobility frictions and innovation. In recent years, scholars and policymakers have rediscovered the concept of industrial districts – spatial concentrations of firms in the same industry or related industries. In this Article, Professor Gilson examines te relationship between high-technology industrial districts and legal infrastructure by comparing the legal regimes of California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts's Route 128. He contends that legal rides governing employee mobility influence the dynamics of high technology industrial districts by either encouraging rapid employee movement between employers and to startups, as in Silicon Valley, or discouraging such movement, as in Route 128. Because California does not...	Ronald J. Gilson
10	2003	Mobility and Social Networks: Localised Knowledge Spillovers Revisited This paper is directly about worker mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion, using inventor patent movements and network ties to explain localized spillovers. It also speaks to the role of hiring from competitors and the interaction between geography, labor mobility, and access to firm-level knowledge networks, which is central to the project. The paper provides a reassessment of arguments and tests in support of the existence and magnitude of localized knowledge spillovers proposed by Jaffe, Trajtenberg and Henderson (1993). We use information in patents to control for the mobility of inventors across companies and space, as well as for the network ties that such mobility helps establishing. Our results indicate that localisation effects tend to vanish where citing and cited patents are not linked to each other by any network relationship. On the contrary, knowledge flows, as evidenced by patent citations, are strongly localized to the extent that labour mobility and network ties also are. We interpret these results as evidence...	Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni
10	2011	Noncompete Covenants: Incentives to Innovate or Impediments to Growth ↗ This paper is directly on target because it studies noncompete enforcement as a labor-market friction that shapes entrepreneurship, firm formation, employment growth, and patenting. Its focus on how legal restrictions on worker mobility interact with innovation and growth maps closely to the project’s core questions about knowledge diffusion through labor movement and the aggregate effects of mobility constraints. We find that the enforcement of noncompete clauses significantly impedes entrepreneurship and employment growth. Based on a panel of metropolitan areas in the United States from 1993 to 2002, our results indicate that, relative to states that enforce noncompete covenants, an increase in the local supply of venture capital in states that restrict the scope of these agreements has significantly stronger positive effects on (i) the number of patents, (ii) the number of firm starts, and (iii) employment. We address potential endogeneity in the supply of venture capital by using endowment returns as an instrumental variable. Our results point to a strong interaction between financial...	Sampsa Samila, Olav Sorenson
10	2005	Labor mobility of scientists, technological diffusion, and the firm's patenting decision This paper is directly on point because it studies scientist mobility as a mechanism for technological diffusion and how departure risk affects firm R&D and patenting behavior. It also speaks to key project themes like labor-market frictions, firm responses to mobility, and the aggregate innovation effects of worker turnover. We develop and test a model of the patenting and R&D decisions of an innovating firm whose scientist-employees sometimes quit to join or start a rival. In our model, the innovating firm patents to protect itself from its employees. We show theoretically that the risk of a scientist's departure reduces the firm's R&D expenditures and raises its propensity to patent an innovation. We find evidence from firm-level panel data that is consistent with this latter result. Our results suggest that scientists' turnover is associated with cross-industry patenting variation and with recent economy-wide increases in patenting. Scientists' turnover may also partly account for why small firms have high...	Jinyoung Kim, Gerald Marschke
10	2021	The local innovation spillovers of listed firms ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how knowledge diffuses across firms through local innovation spillovers and explicitly identifies inventor mobility as one of the key transmission channels. It also connects spillovers to the availability of capital and firm innovation responses, which aligns closely with the project’s interest in worker mobility, knowledge transfer, and aggregate innovation dynamics. Abstract This paper provides evidence of local innovation spillovers (i.e., innovation by one firm fostering innovation by neighboring firms). First, I document that exogenous shocks to innovation by listed firms affect innovation by private firms in the same geographical area and that such local innovation spillovers decline rapidly with distance. Second, these local innovation spillovers stem from knowledge diffusing locally through two channels: learning across local firms and inventors moving from their employer to both existing firms and newly started spin-outs. Finally, I study the two-way relations between innovation spillovers and the availability of capital. I find that local...	Adrien Matray
10	1983	Optimum Contracts for Research Personnel, Research Employment, and the Establishment of "Rival" Enterprises ↗ This paper is directly about the mobility of scientific personnel and how firms design contracts and employment policies when workers can carry knowledge to rival enterprises. It speaks to the project’s core questions on knowledge diffusion through labor mobility, the effects of mobility frictions or incentives on research employment, and the firm-level response to potential spillovers. This paper considers the problem of hiring scientists for research and development projects when one takes explicit account of the fact that the scientist may be able to use the information acquired during the project in a rival enterprise. Management's problem is to determine an optimum labor policy for its project. The policy consists of an employment decision and a labor contract. Given optimum behavior, it is straightforward to analyze the effect of the potential for mobility of scientific personnel on project profitability and on research employment. We also formalize conditions under which one would expect to observe a scientist leaving his employer to set up or join a rival.	Ariel Pakes, Shmuel Nitzan
10	2013	Job Hopping, Information Technology Spillovers, and Productivity Growth ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies worker mobility as the channel through which technology and productivity spillovers diffuse across firms. It quantifies how IT workers transmit knowledge from one firm to another and links those mobility-driven spillovers to aggregate productivity growth, which matches the project’s central themes very closely. The movement of information technology (IT) workers among firms is believed to be an important mechanism by which IT-related innovations diffuse throughout the economy. We use a newly developed source of employee microdata—an online resume database—to model IT workers' mobility patterns. We find that firms derive significant productivity benefits from the IT investments of other firms from which they hire IT labor. Our estimates indicate that over the last two decades, productivity spillovers from the IT investments of other firms transmitted through this channel have contributed 20%–30% as much to productivity growth as firms' own IT investments. Moreover, we find that the productivity...	Prasanna Tambe, Lorin M. Hitt
10	2014	Regional disadvantage? Employee non-compete agreements and brain drain ↗ This paper is directly on target because it studies how employee non-compete agreements shape the interstate mobility of knowledge workers and generate brain drain. It also speaks to the project’s core mechanism of worker mobility as a conduit for knowledge diffusion, with evidence that more collaborative and impactful workers are especially affected. A growing body of research has documented the local impact of employee non-compete agreements, but their effect on interstate migration patterns remains unexplored. Exploiting an inadvertent policy reversal in Michigan as a natural experiment, we show that non-compete agreements are responsible for a "brain drain" of knowledge workers out of states that enforce such contracts to states where they are not enforceable. Importantly, this effect is felt most strongly on the margin of workers who are more collaborative and whose work is more impactful.	Matt Marx, Jasjit Singh, Lee Fleming
10	2021	Taxation and Innovation in the Twentieth Century ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies how taxes affect inventors’ innovation production and, crucially, cross-state mobility, which is a central mechanism for knowledge diffusion in your project. It also distinguishes effects on corporate versus noncorporate inventors and on the location of innovation, making it highly pertinent to firm behavior, worker movement, and aggregate innovation outcomes. Abstract This article studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patented since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax rates and tax base information, which we link to existing data on state-level personal income taxes and other economic outcomes. Our analysis focuses on the effect of personal and corporate income taxes on individual inventors (the micro level) and on states (the macro level), considering the quantity and quality of innovation, its location, and the share produced by the corporate rather than the noncorporate sector...	Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas, et al.
10	2010	Markets for Inventors: Learning-by-Hiring as a Driver of Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion across firms and explicitly frames hiring inventors as “learning-by-hiring.” It also examines how the characteristics of embodied knowledge affect mobility and firm-level learning, which maps closely to the project’s focus on worker movement, spillovers, and innovation dynamics. Hiring away inventors has long been recognized as a way of learning used by innovative firms. This paper claims that the characteristics of the knowledge accumulated by an inventor at his current employer affect what hiring firms can learn from him. The implication is that some inventors are more likely to be hired away than their coworkers. We analyze the relationship between the type of knowledge embodied by inventors working at IBM and their probability of moving. Relying on patent data to track the movement of inventors across firms and to characterize the kind of know-how they hold, we identify the following drivers of inventor mobility: the quality of their work; the complementarity...	Neus Palomeras, Eduardo Melero
10	2014	Does the mobility of R&D labor increase innovation? ↗ This paper is directly about how mobility of R&D workers affects innovation through knowledge transfer between firms, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility as a diffusion mechanism. It also examines effects on both the hiring and departing firms’ patenting, making it highly relevant to questions about firm-level innovation, spillovers, and aggregate knowledge diffusion. We investigate the effect of mobility of R&D workers on the total patenting activity of their employers. Our study documents how mobile workers affect the patenting activity of the firm they join and the firm they leave. The effect of labor mobility is strongest if workers join from patent-active firms. We also find evidence of a positive feedback effect on the former employer's patenting from workers who have left for another patent-active firm. Summing up the effects of joining and leaving workers, we show that labor mobility increases the total innovative activity of the new and the old employer. Our study which is based on the population of R&D active Danish firms observed between 1999...	Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, Thomas Rønde
10	2018	Trade secrets and innovation: Evidence from the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine ↗ This paper is directly about how employer-friendly legal restrictions on inventor mobility affect innovation, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. It also speaks to the broader policy question of how frictions like trade secrecy protections alter inventors’ incentives, patenting, and the aggregate pace of technological progress. Research Summary: Does heightened employer‐friendly trade secrecy protection help or hinder innovation? By examining U.S. state‐level legal adoption of a doctrine allowing employers to curtail inventor mobility if the employee would “inevitably disclose” trade secrets, we investigate the impact of a shifting trade secrecy regime on individual‐level patenting outcomes. Using a difference‐in‐differences design taking unaffected U.S. inventors as the comparison group, we find strengthening employer‐friendly trade secrecy adversely affects innovation. We then investigate why. We do not find empirical support for diminished idea recombination from suppressed inventor mobility as the operative...	Andrea Contigiani, David H. Hsu, Iwan Barankay
10	2001	Innovation and reciprocal externalities: information transmission via job mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how worker job mobility transmits information across firms and shapes R&D, technological progress, and equilibrium mobility. It also speaks to the effects of mobility restrictions like contractual clauses, making it highly relevant to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and knowledge diffusion. The phenomenon of "job-hopping", frequent in environments such as Silicon Valley, challenges firms' ability to protect their proprietary information. This paper presents a two-period model of a competitive industry where workers may capitalize on information acquired on the job by migrating to rival firms. Equilibrium is characterized by levels of R&D investment and job mobility. Several intriguing results are specified. First, higher mobility generally corresponds to greater overall technological progress. Furthermore, the equilibrium rate of job mobility never exceeds the socially efficient rate. Finally, due to the existence of opposing external effects, an efficient outcome can be...	David P. Cooper
10	2015	Taxation and the International Mobility of Inventors ↗ [Title only] This paper is very likely central to the project because it explicitly studies international mobility of inventors, a core mechanism for knowledge diffusion across firms and countries. If it analyzes how taxation affects inventor movement, it should speak directly to labor market frictions, policy-induced mobility changes, and the consequences for innovation and technology transfer. No abstract available.	Ufuk Akcigit, Salomé Baslandze, Stefanie Stantcheva
10	2008	<scp>Covenants not to Compete, Labor Mobility, and Industry Dynamics</scp> ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies non-compete covenants, labor mobility, and industry dynamics as mechanisms shaping the diffusion of knowledge and firm outcomes. Its focus on how mobility frictions affect regional innovation trajectories and spin-outs maps closely to the project’s core themes of worker movement, knowledge spillovers, and policy restrictions on mobility. Conventional wisdom among legal scholars is that contractual restrictions on employee mobility affect turnover and led to the overtaking of Massachusetts' Route 128 by Silicon Valley. We study a model of employee mobility in the spirit of Pakes and Nitzan to see when this can be the case. We show that, in fact, with certain frictions taken into account, a model of employee mobility can not only replicate the overtaking by Silicon Valley, but it can also help to explain Route 128s early dominance. Further, the model explains the relative success of firms that start as, or generate, spin‐outs.	April Franco, Matthew Mitchell
10	2017	The knowledge spillover theory of intrapreneurship ↗ This paper is directly about labor mobility as a channel for knowledge spillovers and innovation, which is central to the project. It uses worker-firm matched data and patent outcomes to show how knowledge-worker mobility affects innovation differently across firm sizes, closely aligning with the project’s focus on worker movement, diffusion, and firm-level innovation impacts. Introducing the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Intrapreneurship, we examine how labour mobility impacts innovation distributed by firm size. A matched employer-employee dataset, pooled with firm-level patent application data, is implemented in the analysis. We provide new evidence that knowledge workers’ mobility has a positive and strongly significant impact on all firms’ innovation output, measured as patent applications. The patterns and effects do however differ between large and small firms. More precisely, for small firms, intraregional mobility of knowledge workers who have previously worked in a patenting firm (the learning-by-hiring effect) is shown to be statistically and...	Pontus Braunerhjelm, Ding Ding, Per Thulin
10	2015	Taxation and the International Mobility of Inventors ↗ This paper is directly about inventors’ international mobility and how tax policy affects the location decisions of high-value knowledge workers, which is central to understanding worker mobility as a channel of technology diffusion. Its findings on superstar inventors, multinational firms, and destination choice also speak directly to how labor market frictions and policy shape the cross-border movement of knowledge and innovation. This paper studies the effect of top tax rates on inventors' international mobility since 1977. We put special emphasis on "superstar" inventors, those with the most abundant and most valuable patents. We use panel data on inventors from the United States and European Patent Offices to track inventors' locations over time and combine it with international effective top tax rate data. We construct a detailed set of proxies for inventors' counterfactual incomes in each possible destination country including, among others, measures of patent quality and technological fit with each potential destination. Exploiting the differential impact of changes in the top tax rate on inventors of different...	Ufuk Akcigit, Salomé Baslandze, Stefanie Stantcheva
10	2018	The ethnic migrant inventor effect: Codification and recombination of knowledge across borders ↗ This paper is directly about skilled worker mobility as a channel for cross-firm and cross-border knowledge diffusion, focusing on ethnic migrant inventors bringing unique knowledge into host firms. It also studies how immigration shocks affect codification, reuse, and recombination of knowledge, making it highly relevant to labor market frictions, innovation, and the aggregate implications of facilitating worker movement. Research Summary Ethnic migrant inventors may differ from locals in terms of the knowledge they bring to host firms. Using a unique dataset of Chinese and Indian herbal patents filed in the United States, we find that an increase in the supply of first‐generation ethnic migrant inventors increases the rate of codification of herbal knowledge at U.S. assignees by 4.5%. Our identification comes from an exogenous shock to the quota of H1B visas and from a list of entities exempted from the shock. We also find that ethnic migrant inventors are more likely to engage in reuse of knowledge previously locked within the cultural context of their home regions, whereas knowledge recombination is more...	Prithwiraj Choudhury, Do Yoon Kim
10	2020	The Effect of Patent Protection on Inventor Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how patent protection affects inventor mobility, a central mechanism in the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Its findings that patents make innovation skills more firm-specific speak directly to how legal frictions shape worker movement, retention, and the transfer of human capital. This article investigates the effect of patent protection on the mobility of early-career employee-inventors. Using data on patent applications filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office between 2001 and 2012 and examiner leniency as a source of exogenous variation in patent protection, we find that one additional patent granted decreases the likelihood of changing employers, on average, by 23%. This decrease is stronger when the employee has fewer coinventors, works outside the core of the firm, and produces more basic-research innovations. These findings are consistent with the idea that patents turn innovation-related skills into patent-holder-specific human capital. This paper was...	Eduardo Melero, Neus Palomeras, David Wehrheim
10	1981	Human Capital and Covenants Not to Compete ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about non-compete agreements, which are one of the central labor-market frictions in your project. It is also likely to discuss how such covenants affect human capital investment, worker mobility, and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. No abstract available.	Paul H. Rubin, Peter J. Shedd
10	1982	Optimum Contracts for Research Personnel, Research Employment, and the Establishment of "Rival" Enterprises ↗ This paper is directly about hiring research personnel while accounting for the transfer of information to rival enterprises, which is central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Its focus on optimal contracts to manage spillovers from scientists’ movement or use of acquired knowledge closely matches the project’s interest in labor market frictions, firm hiring/retention, and the diffusion of technology across firms. This paper considers the problem of hiring scientists for research and development projects when one takes explicit account of the fact that the scientist may be able to use the information acquired during the project in a rival enterprise. Management's problem is to determine an optimum labor	Ariel Pakes, Shmuel Nitzan
10	2019	Inventor migration and knowledge flows: A two-way communication channel? ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how inventor and highly skilled migrant mobility affects international knowledge diffusion, using patent citations as the outcome. It also speaks to the direction and context dependence of spillovers—between host and home countries and through multinationals—which is central to understanding how worker movement transfers technology and knowledge across firms and economies. Abstract This paper documents the influence of networks of highly skilled migrants on the international diffusion of knowledge – particularly those with degrees and occupations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It investigates knowledge inflows to host countries brought in by skilled immigrants. It then explores knowledge feedback to home countries generated by these migrants. We test our hypotheses in a country-pair gravity model setting, for the period 1990–2010, using patent citations across countries to measure international knowledge diffusion. Our results confirm our hypotheses on the positive impact of skilled migrants on knowledge flows to host and home countries...	Ernest Miguélez, Claudia Noumedem Temgoua
10	2011	The Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge Across Time and Space: Evidence from Professional Transitions for the Superstars of Medicine ↗ This paper is directly about how worker mobility of elite scientists changes the diffusion of knowledge across locations and between academia and industry, which is central to the project. It also speaks to face-to-face spillovers, labor mobility barriers, and the impact of moving workers on patent and citation-based knowledge flows, making it a core fit. Are scientific knowledge flows embodied in individuals, or "in the air"? To answer this question, we measure the effect of labor mobility in a sample of 9,483 elite academic life scientists on the citation trajectories associated with individual articles (resp. patents) published (resp. granted) before the scientist moved to a new institution. We find that article-to-article citations from the scientific community at the superstar's origin location are barely affected by their departure. In contrast, article-to-patent citations, and especially patent-to-patent citations, decline at the origin location following a star's departure, suggesting that spillovers from academia to industry are not...	Pierre Azoulay, Joshua Graff Zivin, Bhaven N. Sampat
10	2019	Knowledge Spillovers through Networks of Scientists ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies knowledge spillovers transmitted through inventor/scientist networks across firms, which is a central mechanism in the project. It also quantifies the social versus private returns to R&D using inter-firm network linkages, making it highly relevant for understanding how worker mobility and collaboration-based connections diffuse technology and affect innovation. Abstract In this article, I directly test the hypothesis that interactions between inventors of different firms drive knowledge spillovers. I construct a network of publicly traded companies in which each link is a function of the relative proportion of two firms’ inventors who have former patent collaborators in both organizations. I use this measure to weigh the impact of R&D performed by each firm on the productivity and innovation outcomes of its network linkages. An empirical concern is that the resulting estimates may reflect unobserved, simultaneous determinants of firm performance, network connections, and external R&D. I address this problem with an innovative IV strategy...	Paolo Zacchia
10	2007	Reputations for Toughness in Patent Enforcement: Implications for Knowledge Spillovers via Inventor Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about patent enforcement and knowledge spillovers via inventor mobility, which are central to the project’s focus on how worker movement transmits technology across firms. The emphasis on reputations for toughness in enforcement also suggests a clear link to legal frictions that may alter inventor mobility, diffusion, and innovation incentives. No abstract available.	Rajshree Agarwal, Martin Ganco, Rosemarie Ham Ziedonis
10	2020	Locked In? The Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete and the Careers of High-Tech Workers ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how non-compete enforceability affects the mobility and wages of high-tech workers, which is central to understanding labor market frictions in knowledge diffusion. Its evidence on increased mobility after a CNC ban and the long-run career effects of enforceability speaks directly to how policies restricting worker movement shape technology transfer and firm power. We study the relationship between the enforceability of covenants not to compete (CNCs) and employee mobility and wages. We exploit a 2015 CNC ban for technology workers in Hawaii and find that this ban increased mobility by 11% and new-hire wages by 4%. We supplement the Hawaii evaluation with a cross-state analysis using matched employer-employee data. We find that eight years after starting a job in an average-enforceability state, technology workers have about 8% fewer jobs and 4.6% lower cumulative earnings relative to equivalent workers starting in a non-enforcing state. These results are consistent with CNC enforceability increasing monopsony power.	Natarajan Balasubramanian, Jin Woo Chang, Mariko Sakakibara, et al.
10	2019	“Good” Firms, Worker Flows, and Local Productivity ↗ This paper is directly about worker mobility as a channel for localized knowledge spillovers and shows that job-to-job moves from highly productive firms raise incumbent firms’ productivity. It speaks squarely to the project’s core themes of worker flows, technology/knowledge diffusion, and aggregate productivity effects from labor market mobility. This paper is the first to present direct evidence showing how localized knowledge spillovers arise from workers changing jobs within the same local labor market. Using a unique data set combining Social Security earnings records and balance sheet information for the Veneto region of Italy, I first identify a set of highly productive firms, then show that hiring workers with experience at these firms significantly increases the productivity of other firms. My findings imply that worker flows explain around 10% of the productivity gains experienced by incumbent firms when new highly productive firms are added to a local labor market.	Michel Serafinelli
10	2016	Inventor Diasporas and the Internationalization of Technology ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility and how skilled diasporas facilitate technology diffusion across borders through co-inventorship and R&D offshoring. It speaks to the project’s core mechanisms by showing how mobile inventors and international networks shape the direction and intensity of knowledge transfer, with implications for innovation and cross-country spillovers. This paper documents the influence of diaspora networks of highly-skilled individuals-that is, inventors-on international technological collaborations. Using gravity models, it studies the determinants of the internationalization of inventive activity between a group of industrialized countries and a sample of developing and emerging economies. The paper examines the influence exerted by skilled diasporas in fostering cross-country co-inventorship as well as R&D offshoring. The study finds a strong and robust relationship between inventor diasporas and different forms of international co-patenting. However, the effect decreases with the level of formality of the interactions. Interestingly...	Ernest Miguélez
10	2005	"Cross-firm" Inventors and Social Networks: Localised Knowledge Spillovers Revisited This paper is directly about inventor mobility and how cross-firm inventors and social networks transmit knowledge across firms, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for technology diffusion. It also speaks to the interpretation of localized spillovers versus mobility-driven internalized knowledge flows, making it highly relevant for studying how labor market frictions affect the direction and quality of diffusion. The paper explores the role of inventors' mobility and social networks in generating localized knowledge flows. Using a sample of Italian inventors, we replicate Jaffe's, Trajtenberg's, and Henderson's [1993] test on patent citations and find similar results. We then control for the role of "cross-firm inventors" (inventors who move across, or do research for different companies), who generate personal self-citations and help creating social links across companies by entering various teams of inventors, which in turn will cite each others' patents. When controlling for personal self-citations, no localization of knowledge flows remains to be seen at the city or province level. What remains...	Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni
10	2006	Gone but not forgotten: knowledge flows, labor mobility, and enduring social relationships ↗ This paper is directly about knowledge flows, labor mobility, and inventor movement, which are central to the project’s focus on how worker mobility diffuses technology and knowledge across firms. It also highlights enduring social and institutional relationships as mechanisms shaping cross-firm and cross-field spillovers, making it highly relevant to questions about the direction and quality of knowledge diffusion. We examine the role of social relationships in facilitating knowledge flows by estimating the flow premium captured by a mobile inventor's previous location. Once an inventor has moved, they are gone - but are they forgotten? We find that knowledge flows to an inventor's prior location are approximately 50% greater than if they had never lived there, suggesting that social relationships, not just physical proximity, are important for determining flow patterns. Furthermore, we find that a large portion of this social effect is mediated by institutional links; however, this is not the result of corporate knowledge management systems but rather of personal relationships formed through...	Ajay Agrawal, Iain Cockburn, John McHale
10	2007	Does mobility increase the productivity of inventors? ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge and measures how moving affects inventive productivity. Its focus on heterogeneous gains from mobility across inventor types is especially relevant to understanding how labor market frictions and worker movement shape knowledge diffusion and innovation. Although labor mobility has been recognized as a key mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge, prior research on inventors has so far hardly discussed the impact of a move on inventive performance. Additionally, existing research has neglected the differences in gains from a move between high and lower performing inventors. This paper adds to the current R&D literature by presenting a jointly estimated quantile regression to compare the coefficients of the explanatory variables at different points of the performance distribution. Additionally, dummy variables are used to compare inventive performance prior and in the aftermath of a move. Results reveal that inventors at the upper end of...	Karin Hoisl
10	2009	Mobility of Skilled Workers and Co-Invention Networks: An Anatomy of Localized Knowledge Flows This paper is directly on point because it studies how mobile inventors and co-invention networks transmit knowledge across firms and places, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility as a mechanism of technology diffusion. It also speaks to the role of geography and localized knowledge flows in patent citations, offering evidence relevant to understanding how mobility frictions shape diffusion and whether observed spillovers are truly externalities. This article illustrates the contribution of mobile inventors and networks of inventors to the diffusion of knowledge across firms and within cities or states. It is based upon an original data set on US inventors’ patent applications at the European Patent Office, in the fields of drugs, biotechnology and organic chemistry. The study combines the methodology originally proposed by Jaffe et al. (1993, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108: 577–598) with tools from social network analysis, in order to evaluate extent of the localization of knowledge flows, as measured by patent citations. After controlling for inventors’ mobility and for the resulting co-invention network, the residual effect...	Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni
10	2010	Job Hopping, Information Technology Spillovers, and Productivity Growth ↗ [Title only] This title is directly aligned with the project because it links worker mobility (“job hopping”) to technology spillovers and productivity growth, which are central mechanisms in knowledge diffusion. It is very likely to discuss how moving workers transfer information or know-how across firms and how that affects aggregate or firm-level innovation and productivity. No abstract available.	Prasanna Tambe, Lorin M. Hitt
10	2009	Who Leaves, Where to, and Why Worry? Employee Mobility, Employee Entrepreneurship, and Effects on Source Firm Performance ↗ [Title only] This paper is directly about employee mobility and employee entrepreneurship, which are central to how knowledge and skills diffuse from one firm to another. The focus on effects on source firm performance also aligns tightly with research on mobility frictions, spillovers, and the aggregate consequences of worker movement. No abstract available.	Benjamin A. Campbell, Martin Ganco, April Franco, et al.
10	2006	Mobility of inventors and the geography of knowledge spillovers. New evidence on US data This paper is directly about inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge spillovers, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement transmits technology across firms. It also speaks to the role of mobility frictions and social distance in shaping the geography and extent of knowledge diffusion, making it a core match. In this paper we exploit new data on US inventors in Organic Chemistry, Pharmaceuticals, and Biotechnology to revisit the JTH test of the localization of knowledge spillovers (Jaffe, Trajtenberg, and Henderson; 1993). We find that inventors who patent across different companies contribute extensively to the observed citation patterns, both directly (through personal self-citations) and indirectly, by linking the various companies via a social network conducive to more citations. To the extent that the geographical mobility of these “cross-firm” inventors is quite limited, the resulting social networks and citations patterns are found to be bounded in space. We conclude that spatial...	Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni
10	2019	Knowledge remittances: Does emigration foster innovation? ↗ This paper is directly about skilled worker mobility as a channel for cross-border knowledge diffusion and innovation, which is central to the project. It also studies how labor mobility legislation affects emigrant-driven knowledge flows and source-country patenting, closely matching the project’s focus on frictions, policy, and aggregate innovation impacts. Does the emigration of skilled individuals necessarily result in losses for source countries due to the brain drain? Combining industry-level patenting and migration data from 32 European countries, we show that emigration in fact positively contributes to innovation in source countries. We use changes in the labour mobility legislation within Europe as exogenous variation to establish causality. By analysing patent citation data, we further provide evidence that these positive effects are driven by knowledge flows that are triggered by emigrants. While skilled migrants are not inventing in their home country anymore, they contribute to cross-border knowledge and technology diffusion and...	Thomas Fackler, Yvonne Giesing, Nadzeya Laurentsyeva
10	2020	The Behavioral Effects of (Unenforceable) Contracts† ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies noncompete agreements and how they affect worker mobility, which is central to understanding labor market frictions that impede knowledge diffusion across firms. Its evidence on reduced mobility, altered destination choices, and the role of beliefs about enforcement speaks directly to the project’s interest in how policy and contract restrictions shape worker movement and, through that channel, technology spillovers. Abstract Do contracts influence behavior independent of the law governing their enforceability? We explore this question in the context of employment noncompetes using nationally representative data for 11,500 labor force participants. We show that noncompetes are associated with reductions in employee mobility and changes in the direction of that mobility (i.e., toward noncompetitors) in both states that do and do not enforce noncompetes. Decomposing mobility into job offer generation and acceptance, we detect no evidence of differences in job search, recruitment, or offer activity associated with noncompetes. Rather, we find that employees with noncompetes—even in states that do not...	Evan Starr, J.J. Prescott, Norman Bishara
10	1982	Optimum Contracts for Research Personnel, Research Employment, and the Establishment of This paper is directly about hiring research personnel when they can carry project knowledge to rival firms, making worker mobility a central mechanism for knowledge diffusion. It also analyzes how mobility affects project profitability, research employment, and conditions for scientists leaving to join or form competitors, which maps very closely to the project’s core themes. This paper considers the problem of hiring scientists for research and development projects when one takes explicit account of the fact that the scientist may be able to use the information acquired during the project in a rival enterprise. Management's problem is to determine an optimum labor policy for its project. The policy consists of an employment decision and a labor contract. Given optimum behavior, it is straightforward to analyze the effect of the potential for mobility of scientific personnel on project profitability and on research employment. We also formalize conditions under which one would expect to observe a scientist leaving his employer to set up (or join) a rival.	Ariel Pakes, Shmuel Nitzan
10	2013	Do Labour Mobility and Technological Collaborations Foster Geographical Knowledge Diffusion? The Case of <scp>E</scp>uropean Regions ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility and technological collaborations as mechanisms for geographical knowledge diffusion, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement and spillovers. It also studies how these cross-regional interactions affect subsequent innovation, making it highly relevant to understanding the diffusion of technology across firms and regions. Abstract The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we aim to assess the role played by inventors' cross‐regional mobility and collaborations in fostering knowledge diffusion across regions and subsequent innovation. Second, we intend to evaluate the feasibility of using mobility and co‐patenting information to build cross‐regional interaction matrices to be used within the spatial econometrics toolbox. To do so, we depart from a knowledge production function where regional innovation intensity is a function not only of the own regional innovation inputs but also external accessible knowledge stocks gained through interregional interactions. Differently from much of the previous literature...	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
10	2014	Talent wants to be free: why we should learn to love leaks, raids, and free riding ↗ This book is directly about worker mobility, talent flows, and how restrictions on movement and secrecy affect innovation, making it central to the project. It also speaks to firm strategies, regional policy, and legal rules around retaining or releasing talent, which are key mechanisms in knowledge diffusion and growth. This timely book challenges conventional business wisdom about competition, secrecy, motivation, and creativity. Orly Lobel, an internationally acclaimed expert in the law and economics of human capital, warns that a set of counterproductive mentalities are stifling innovation in many regions and companies. Lobel asks how innovators, entrepreneurs, research teams, and every one of us who experiences the occasional spark of creativity can triumph in today's innovation ecosystems. In every industry and every market, battles to recruit, retain, train, energize, and motivate the best people are fierce. From Facebook to Google, Coca-Cola to Intel, JetBlue to Mattel, Lobel uncovers specific...
10	2022	Inter-Firm Inventor Collaboration and Path-Breaking Innovation: Evidence From Inventor Teams Post-Merger ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies inventor mobility and post-merger collaboration as a mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge and improving innovation outcomes. It speaks to the project’s core questions about how labor movement and firm-level hiring/recombination of skilled workers affect knowledge diffusion, innovation quality, and firm productivity. Abstract Using a large and novel data set over the period of 1976 to 2019 tracking inventors’ career paths following mergers and acquisitions, we show that collaboration between acquirer and target inventors post-merger is associated with more path-breaking patents than those filed by either acquirer or target inventor-only teams. We further show that such collaboration is more important in improving acquirers’ innovation capabilities than hiring target inventors and knowledge spillovers. Finally, we show that recombining tacit knowledge embodied in the human capital of acquirer and target inventors is likely the mechanism. We conclude that inter-firm inventor collaboration is one key means...	Kai Li, Wang Jin
10	2022	Disloyal Managers and Shareholders’ Wealth ↗ This paper is directly about how legal restrictions on employee loyalty and mobility shape innovation outcomes, showing that waiving fiduciary duty reduces R&D, patenting, and increases inventor departures. It is highly relevant to the project’s core questions on labor market frictions, worker mobility, and their effects on knowledge diffusion and firm innovation. Abstract A duty of loyalty prohibits fiduciaries from appropriating business opportunities from their companies. Starting in 2000, Delaware, followed by several other states, allowed boards to waive their duty. We show that public firms covered by waiver laws invest less in R&D, produce fewer and less valuable patents, and exhibit abnormally high inventor departures. Remaining innovation activities contribute less to firm value, a fact confirmed by the market reaction when firms reveal their curtailed internal growth opportunities by announcing acquisitions. Consistent with the laws’ intent to provide contracting flexibility to emerging firms, we find evidence of positive impacts for small...	Eliezer M. Fich, Jarrad Harford, Anh Tran
10	2019	Knowledge Spillovers through Labour Mobility: An Employer–Employee Analysis ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies knowledge spillovers through labor mobility using employer-employee panel data and shows how workers exposed to innovation transmit productive knowledge to other firms. It also links worker mobility to wage premia, high-skill labor, and improved performance at hiring firms, which speaks directly to the project’s core themes of diffusion, firm behavior, and productivity effects. Using a 16-year employer–employee panel dataset that contains the entire population of firms and workers in Argentina, this paper provides evidence of the benefits of public support for firm-level innovation for the firms that received support, the workers who were employed by them, and the firms that hired beneficiary workers. The results confirm that participant firms improve their performance and generate valuable productive knowledge, which spills over to workers who directly participated in the program and is diffused through labour mobility to other firms. The worker-level results show that workers exposed to innovation projects receive higher wages. High-skilled workers receive most...	Victoria Castillo, Lucas Figal Garone, Alessandro Maffioli, et al.
10	2020	Immigration and Invention: Evidence from the Quota Acts This paper is directly about how labor supply shocks from immigration affect invention, making it central to understanding how worker mobility and labor market frictions shape innovation. Its findings on the rate and direction of inventive activity under labor scarcity are highly relevant to the project’s focus on knowledge diffusion, firm behavior, and aggregate innovation effects. Inventions often economize on labor, so economists have long posited that scarce labor should encourage invention (Hicks, 1932). But the production of new inventions can require a division of labor and economies of scale that require plentiful labor instead. We provide the first causal evidence of mass immigration’s effect on invention, using variation induced by 1920s quotas, which ended history’s largest international migration. Inventors in cities and industries exposed to fewer low-skilled immigrants applied for fewer patents. Industries with small establishment sizes attracted an everincreasing share of invention. Labor scarcity affected both the rate and direction of inventive...	Chungeun Yoon, Kirk Doran
10	2018	Trade Secrets and Innovation: Evidence from the 'Inevitable Disclosure' Doctrine ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies a legal restriction on inventor mobility—trade secrecy protection via the inevitable disclosure doctrine—and its causal impact on inventor-level innovation. It also speaks to the project’s core mechanisms by showing how labor market frictions alter incentives, patenting, and the diffusion of knowledge through reduced external labor market prospects. Research Summary: Does heightened employer‐friendly trade secrecy protection help or hinder innovation? By examining U.S. state‐level legal adoption of a doctrine allowing employers to curtail inventor mobility if the employee would “inevitably disclose” trade secrets, we investigate the impact of a shifting trade secrecy regime on individual‐level patenting outcomes. Using a difference‐in‐differences design taking unaffected U.S. inventors as the comparison group, we find strengthening employer‐friendly trade secrecy adversely affects innovation. We then investigate why. We do not find empirical support for diminished idea recombination from suppressed inventor mobility as the operative...	Andrea Contigiani, Iwan Barankay, David H. Hsu
10	2010	Regional Disadvantage? Non-Compete Agreements and Brain Drain ↗ [Title only] The title is directly about non-compete agreements and brain drain, which are central to worker mobility frictions and the diffusion of skilled labor that your project studies. It likely speaks to how legal restrictions on mobility affect regional talent flows and knowledge spillovers, making it highly relevant. No abstract available.	Matt Marx, Jasjit Singh, Lee Fleming
10	2017	Locked in? The Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete and the Careers of High-Tech Workers ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how non-compete enforceability affects the mobility and wages of high-tech workers, which is central to understanding labor market frictions that shape knowledge diffusion. Its evidence on increased mobility and earnings after a CNC ban speaks directly to how policy can alter worker movement and the transmission of skills and technology across firms. Abstract We study the relationship between the enforceability of covenants not to compete (CNCs) and employee mobility and wages. We exploit a 2015 CNC ban for technology workers in Hawaii and find that this ban increased mobility by 11 percent and new-hire wages by 4 percent. We supplement the Hawaii evaluation with a cross-state analysis using matched employer–employee data. We find that eight years after starting a job in an average-enforceability state, technology workers have about 8 percent fewer jobs and 4.6 percent lower cumulative earnings relative to equivalent workers starting in a nonenforcing state. These results are consistent with CNC enforceability increasing monopsony power.	Natarajan Balasubramanian, Jin Woo Chang, Mariko Sakakibara, et al.
10	2023	The Labor Market Effects of Legal Restrictions on Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how noncompete enforceability restricts worker mobility, lowers job switching, and alters wages through outside options, which are central mechanisms in the project. Its search-and-bargaining framework and evidence on labor market dynamism and spillovers also speak directly to how mobility frictions shape diffusion and aggregate outcomes. We analyze how the legal enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs) affects labor markets.Using newly-constructed panel data, we find that higher NCA enforceability diminishes workers' earnings and job mobility, with larger effects among workers most likely to sign NCAs.These effects are far-reaching: changes in enforceability impose externalities on workers across state borders, suggesting that enforceability broadly affects labor market dynamism.We provide evidence that NCA enforceability primarily affects wages through its effect on workers' outside options; moreover, workers facing high enforceability are unable to leverage tight labor markets to increase earnings.We motivate these...	Matthew S. Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, Michael Lipsitz
10	2022	How innovating firms manage knowledge leakage: A natural experiment on the threat of worker departure ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies how worker departure risk and noncompete enforceability shape firms’ knowledge protection strategies, a central mechanism in the project’s focus on labor mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also uses a natural experiment on California noncompete law and examines inventor migration, making it highly informative about how labor market frictions affect the flow and protection of firm-specific knowledge. Abstract Research Summary Knowledge protection strategies are crucial to innovating firms facing the risk of knowledge leakage. We examine the threat of worker departure as a key mechanism through which firms choose between patents and secrecy. We exploit a 1998 California court decision that ruled out‐of‐state noncompetes were not enforceable in California, thereby creating a loophole limiting non‐California firms in their enforcement of noncompetes against their workers. When facing a higher threat of worker departure, firms strategically increased patent filings, exchanging legal protection for public disclosure of the invention. These effects were magnified for large‐sized firms and for...	Hyo Kang, Wyatt Lee
10	2009	Software Patents, Inventors and Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about inventors and mobility, which are central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for knowledge diffusion. The software patents angle also suggests technology transfer, innovation incentives, and possibly how patenting affects inventor labor mobility and spillovers. No abstract available.	Manuel Trajtenberg, Roy Shalem
10	2016	Knowledge spillovers through inventor mobility: the effect on firm-level patenting ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility as a channel of knowledge spillovers between firms, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses technology and affects innovation. It also speaks to firm-level consequences of hiring, retention, and outbound mobility for patenting performance, making it highly relevant for studying labor market frictions and the direction and quality of knowledge diffusion. Labor mobility is heralded as a key channel of knowledge spillovers between firms. However, the empirical evidence on labor mobility’s effects on firm performance leaves many unanswered questions. In this paper, we analyze the effect of inventor mobility on firm-level patenting activity by studying a sample of European R&D investing firms. Especially, the characteristics of mobile inventors and their previous employers are analyzed to discover the prerequisites of successful knowledge transfer. The empirical results suggest that mobile patent inventors transfer knowledge and affect the hiring firm’s future innovation performance. Inventor mobility in general does not significantly increase...	Jaana Rahko
10	2018	The workforce of pioneer plants ↗ This paper is directly about how worker mobility enables technology and industry diffusion, using plant workforce composition and recruitment patterns to study how pioneer firms acquire experienced workers. It is especially relevant because it examines cross-region and cross-industry hiring, skilled labor inflows, and the role of mobility in reindustrialization and knowledge transfer. Does technology require labour mobility to diffuse? To explore this, we use German social-security data and ask how plants that pioneer an industry in a location – and for which the local labour market offers no experienced workers – assemble their workforces. These pioneers use different recruiting strategies than plants elsewhere: they hire more workers from outside their industry and from outside their region, especially when workers come from closely related industries or are highly skilled. The importance of access to experienced workers is highlighted in the diffusion of industries from western Germany to the post-reunification economy of eastern German. While manufacturing employment...	Ricardo Hausmann, Frank Neffke
10	2020	Mobility of highly skilled individuals and local innovation activity ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a channel for technological knowledge circulation and estimates how that mobility affects local innovation activity. It also examines what shapes inventor flows, including geographic and technological proximity, which speaks directly to the project’s interest in the determinants and consequences of worker-mediated knowledge diffusion. Abstract Mobilization of valuable resources, especially of talented individuals, figures prominently in firms’ strategies and policy agendas. Thus far, there is a dearth of empirical evidence in the field. The contribution of this paper is two-pronged: first, to perform an integral evaluation of the different factors that shape the mobility of patent inventors -a specific class of highly skilled individuals, who are deeply involved in the production of innovation and are important vehicle of technological knowledge circulation- and second, to assess the effects of their mobility on local innovation activity. Employing detailed patent data to track their moves, we use a gravity model to...	Kyriakos Drivas, Claire Economidou, Dimitrios Karamanis, et al.
10	2019	The Labor Market Effects of Legal Restrictions on Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is directly about legal restrictions on worker mobility through noncompete enforceability, making it central to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and mobility costs. Its evidence on reduced job mobility and earnings, plus spillovers across border-crossing local labor markets, is highly relevant for understanding how restrictions on worker movement affect labor allocation and potentially knowledge diffusion. We analyze how the legal enforceability of Noncompete Agreements (NCAs) affects labor markets. Using newly-constructed panel data, we find that higher NCA enforceability diminishes workers’ earnings and job mobility, with larger effects among workers most likely to sign NCAs. These effects are far-reaching: examining local labor markets that cross state borders reveals that enforceability affects workers’ earnings in different legal jurisdictions. Revisiting a classic model of wage-setting, we find that—in contrast to prior evidence—workers facing high enforceability are unable to leverage tight labor markets to increase their wage. Finally, higher NCA enforceability exacerbates gender and...	Matthew S. Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, Michael Lipsitz
10	2024	The Global Race for Talent: Brain Drain, Knowledge Transfer, and Growth ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor migration as a mechanism for international knowledge diffusion, using patent-based microdata and an endogenous growth model. It also analyzes how migration policy affects innovation, spillovers, and long-run productivity growth, which aligns exactly with the project’s focus on worker mobility frictions and aggregate growth effects. Abstract How does inventors’ migration affect international talent allocation, knowledge diffusion, and productivity growth? To answer this question, I build a novel two-country innovation-led endogenous growth model, where heterogeneous inventors produce innovations, learn from others, and make dynamic migration and return decisions. Migrants interact with individuals at origin and destination, diffusing knowledge within and across countries. To quantify this framework, I construct a micro-level data set of migrant inventors on the U.S.-EU corridor from patent data and document that (i) gross migration is asymmetric, with brain drain (net emigration) from the EU to the United States; (ii)...	Marta Prato
10	2010	"Cross-firm" Inventors and Social Networks: Localized Knowledge Spillovers Revisited This paper is directly about inventor mobility and cross-firm work as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion, which is central to the project. It also addresses how localized spillovers may actually reflect social networks and inventor movement rather than pure externalities, making it highly relevant for understanding technology transfer under labor-market frictions. The paper explores the role of inventors' mobility and social networks in generating localized knowledge flows. Using a sample of Italian inventors, we replicate Jaffe's, Trajtenberg's, and Henderson's [1993] test on patent citations and find similar results. We then control for the role of firm (inventors who move across, or do research for different companies), who generate personal self-citations and help creating social links across companies by entering various teams of inventors, which in turn will cite each others' patents. When controlling for personal self-citations, no localization of knowledge flows remains to be seen at the city or province level. What remains of localization...	Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni
10	2006	'Names Game': Harnessing Inventors Patent Data for Economic Research This paper is highly relevant because it develops the inventor-level patent data infrastructure needed to study worker mobility, especially the movement of inventors across employers, regions, and countries. Its methodology directly supports analysis of knowledge diffusion, patenting histories, co-inventor networks, and the consequences of inventor mobility for innovation and productivity. The goal of this paper is to lay out a methodology and corresponding computer algorithms, that allow us to extract the detailed data on inventors contained in patents, and harness it for economic research. Patent data has long been used in empirical research in economics, and yet the information on the identity (i.e. the names and location) of the patents’ inventors has seldom been deployed in a large scale, primarily because of the “who is who” problem: the name of a given inventor may be spelled differently across her/his patents, and the exact same name may correspond to different inventors (i.e. the “John Smith” problem). Given that there are over 2 million patents with 2 inventors per...	Ran Melamed, Gil Shiff, Manuel Trajtenberg
10	2012	Do Labour Mobility and Networks Foster Geographical Knowledge Diffusion? The Case of European Regions ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how inventor mobility and collaboration networks drive geographical knowledge diffusion and subsequent innovation across regions. Its focus on cross-regional mobility frictions, spillovers from external R&D, and the innovation effects of worker movement matches the core mechanisms in your project very closely. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we aim to assess the role played by inventors’ cross-regional mobility and networks of collaboration in fostering knowledge diffusion across regions and subsequent innovation. Second, we intend to evaluate the feasibility of using mobility and networks information to build cross-regional interaction matrices to be used within the spatial econometrics toolbox. To do so, we depart from a knowledge production function where regional innovation intensity is a function not only of the own regional innovation inputs but also external accessible R&D gained through interregional interactions. Differently from much of the previous literature, cross-section...	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
10	2011	Labor Mobility, Social Network Effects, and Innovative Activity ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how labor mobility affects innovative activity and knowledge transfer across firms, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for diffusion. It also speaks to the quality and direction of spillovers by distinguishing movers from innovative firms and by showing feedback effects on both the new and former employers. We study the mapping between labor mobility and industrial innovative activity for the population of R&D active Danish firms observed between 1999 and 2004. Our study documents a positive relationship between the number of workers who join a firm and the firm's innovative activity. This relationship is stronger if workers join from innovative firms. We also find evidence for positive feedback from workers who leave for an innovative firm, presumably because the worker who left stays in contact with their former colleagues. This implies that the positive feedback ("social network effects") that has been found by other studies not only exists but even outweighs the disruption and loss of...	Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, Thomas Rønde
10	2017	Locked In? The Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete and the Careers of High-Tech Workers ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how non-compete enforceability affects high-tech worker mobility and wages, which are central mechanisms in the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Its findings on reduced mobility and lower cumulative earnings under enforceable covenants speak directly to labor market frictions, monopsony power, and the policy impact of restricting worker movement. Abstract We study the relationship between the enforceability of covenants not to compete (CNCs) and employee mobility and wages. We exploit a 2015 CNC ban for technology workers in Hawaii and find that this ban increased mobility by 11 percent and new-hire wages by 4 percent. We supplement the Hawaii evaluation with a cross-state analysis using matched employer–employee data. We find that eight years after starting a job in an average-enforceability state, technology workers have about 8 percent fewer jobs and 4.6 percent lower cumulative earnings relative to equivalent workers starting in a nonenforcing state. These results are consistent with CNC enforceability increasing monopsony power.	Natarajan Balasubramanian, Jin Woo Chang, Mariko Sakakibara, et al.
10	2013	Driving Performance: A Growth Theory of Noncompete Law This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies noncompete law as a labor-market friction affecting worker mobility, knowledge transfer, and innovation outcomes. It also links mobility restrictions to endogenous growth, spillovers, patenting, entrepreneurship, and regional productivity, which are central to the project’s core themes. Traditional law and economic analysis views post-employment restrictions, ranging from non-compete agreements to intellectual property controls over an ex-employee’s knowledge and skill, as necessary for economic investment and market growth. The orthodox economic analysis theorizes that without such contractual and regulatory protections, businesses would under-invest in R&D and human capital. This Article challenges the orthodox analysis by introducing both behavioral dimensions and endogenous growth effects of job mobility over time. The article empirically tests the behavioral dimension with original experimental research demonstrating that contractual backgrounds in market relations...	Orly Lobel, On Amir
10	2016	Productivity effects of knowledge transfers through labour mobility ↗ This paper is directly about technology and knowledge transfer through labor mobility, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses expertise across firms and industries. It also studies productivity effects and heterogeneity by source industry technology level, making it highly relevant to questions about the aggregate and directional impact of mobility on knowledge spillovers and growth. This paper examines whether there are productivity gains due to technology being transmitted across industries through the movement of skilled workers embodying human capital. The empirical analysis is based on household survey and industry-level data for a sample of 12 European Union countries covering the years 1995–2005. The estimates provide evidence of positive cross-sectoral knowledge spillovers and indicate that labour mobility has considerable beneficial effects on industry productivity. The paper further shows that the spillover effects vary considerably by technology level of the giving industry. While workers moving from high-tech and medium-tech industries are found to produce...	Neil Foster‐McGregor, Johannes Pöschl
10	2015	The Network Picture of Labor Flow ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly suggests an analysis of labor flows, which are central to understanding worker mobility and how people transmit knowledge across firms and industries. A network perspective is especially likely to connect to search frictions, matching, and spillover channels that shape diffusion of technology and productivity. No abstract available.	Eduardo López, Omar Guerrero, Robert L. Axtell
10	2023	Air pollution-induced brain drain: Evidence from inventor mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as the mechanism through which environmental conditions shape where skilled workers move and how knowledge is reallocated across firms and locations. It also links inventor outflows to firm innovation output, which speaks directly to the project’s concerns about worker mobility, knowledge diffusion, and aggregate innovation consequences. This study attempts to examine the impact of air pollution on inventor mobility. Specifically, we find that the number of polluting facilities surrounding inventors' workplaces significantly affects their mobility. To establish causality, we introduce the NOx Budget Trading Program of 2003 as an exogenous shock and find consistent results. We further demonstrate that the air pollution drives inventors to relocate to areas with better air quality. We present several economic mechanisms underlying our findings, including inventors' career concerns, knowledge generality, and knowledge complementarity. Finally, we show that the net outflow of inventors negatively affects firms' innovation...	Shasha Liu, Dongmin Kong, Jian Zhang
10	2008	Covenants not to Compete, Labor Mobility, and Industry Dynamics This paper is directly about how covenants not to compete affect labor mobility, turnover, and industry dynamics, which are central to the project’s focus on mobility frictions and knowledge diffusion. It also explicitly studies spin-outs and the evolution of regional industry leadership, making it highly relevant for understanding how restrictions on worker movement shape innovation and firm dynamics. Conventional wisdom among legal scholars is that contractual restrictions on employee mobility a¤ect turnover and led to the overtaking of Massachusetts ’ Route 128 by Silicon Valley. We study a model of employee mobility in the spirit of Pakes and Nitzan (1984) to see when this can be the case. We show that, in fact, with certain frictions taken into account, a model of employee mobility can not only replicate the overtaking by Silicon Valley, but it can also help to explain Route 128’s early dominance. Further, the model explains the relative success of …rms that start as, or generate, spin-outs. 1	April M. Franco, Matthew F. Mitchell
10	2020	Inventor mobility and productivity: a long-run perspective ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism affecting productivity, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through worker movement. Its separation of firm and geographic mobility, use of patent data, and evidence that mobility raises inventor productivity align closely with the project’s focus on skilled-worker movement and innovation spillovers. The aim of this paper is to explore the influence of mobility on inventor productivity. Unlike most previous literature in this field, we separate the impact of firm mobility from geographical mobility. Our paper is also novel because of the long period of investigation. We report how the different forms of mobility, and their impacts, have changed over the period 1836–1975 using US patent data. Mobility is identified for serial inventors who change assignee and/or location over time. Firm mobility and geographical mobility increase throughout the period examined, with only temporary reversals around the Great Depression and Second World War. Comparisons across matched samples of mobile and...	Frank van der Wouden, David L. Rigby
10	2014	Knowledge Spillovers of Innovation Policy through Labor Mobility: An Impact Evaluation of the FONTAR Program in Argentina ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies knowledge spillovers from an innovation policy specifically through labor mobility, using worker-firm matched data to trace qualified workers from treated firms to others. It also estimates how this mobility-mediated diffusion affects firm outcomes like employment, wages, and exporting, which aligns closely with the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for technology and knowledge transfer. Although knowledge spillovers are at the core of the innovation policy's justification, they have never been properly measured by any impact evaluation. This paper fills this gap by estimating the spillover effects of the FONTAR program in Argentina. We use an employer-employee matched panel dataset with the entire population of firms and workers in Argentina for the period 2002-2010. This dataset allows us to track the mobility of qualified workers from FONTAR beneficiary firms to other firms and, therefore, to identify firms that indirectly benefit from the program through knowledge diffusion. We use a combination of fixed effect and matching to estimate the causal effect-direct and...	Rodolfo Stucchi, Sofía Rojo, Alessandro Maffioli, et al.
10	2024	How does worker mobility affect business adoption of a new technology? The case of machine learning ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how worker mobility, proxied by changes in non-compete enforceability, affects firms’ adoption of a new technology. It speaks to the project’s core mechanisms by linking labor market frictions to technology diffusion, firm incentives to invest in early-stage learning, and the downstream impact on adoption of machine learning. Abstract Research Summary We investigate how worker mobility influences the adoption of a new technology using state‐level changes to the enforceability of noncompete agreements as an exogenous shock to worker mobility. Using data on over 153,000 establishments from 2010 and 2018, we find that changes that facilitate worker movements are associated with a significant decline in the likelihood of adoption of machine learning. Moreover, we find that the magnitude of decline depends upon the size of the establishment, the extent of predictive analytics adoption in its industry, and the number of large establishments in the same industry‐location. These results are consistent with the view that...	Ruyu Chen, Natarajan Balasubramanian, Chris Forman
10	2008	Labor Mobility and Patenting Activity This paper is directly on point because it studies labor mobility as a mechanism for transmitting knowledge and skills across firms, exactly matching the project’s focus on worker movement and knowledge diffusion. Its evidence on R&D worker moves, prior patent exposure, and the joint patenting effects on donor and recipient firms makes it highly relevant for understanding how mobility shapes innovation and aggregate inventive activity. We measure the quantitative importance of labor mobility as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge and skills across firms. For this purpose we create a unique data set that matches all applications of Danish firms at the European Patent Office to linked employer-employee register data for the years 1999-2002. The Danish workforce is split into "R&D workers", who hold a bachelor's or a master's degree in a technical field, and "non-R&D workers". We find that mobile R&D workers ("R&D joiners"') contribute more to patenting activity than immobile R&D workers. Furthermore, R&D workers who have previously been employed by a patenting firm ("patent exposed workers") have a larger effect on...	Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, Thomas Rønde
10	2004	Markets for Inventors: Examining Mobility Patterns of Engineers in the Semiconductor Industry ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about inventor mobility, specifically engineers in the semiconductor industry, which is highly likely to connect to knowledge diffusion across firms. The phrase "markets for inventors" also suggests analysis of labor market matching, mobility patterns, and spillovers that are central to the project. No abstract available.	Neus Palomeras
10	2025	The Labor Market Effects of Legal Restrictions on Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how legal restrictions on worker mobility, specifically non-compete enforceability, affect job mobility and earnings. Those mechanisms are central to the project’s focus on labor market frictions that shape worker movement and, through it, the diffusion of knowledge and technology across firms. We analyze how the legal enforceability of Noncompete Agreements (NCAs) affects labor markets. Using newly-constructed panel data, we find that higher NCA enforceability diminishes workers’ earnings and job mobility, with larger effects among workers most likely to sign NCAs. These effects are far-reaching: examining local labor markets that cross state borders reveals that enforceability affects workers’ earnings in different legal jurisdictions. Revisiting a classic model of wage-setting, we find that—in contrast to prior evidence—workers facing high enforceability are unable to leverage tight labor markets to increase their wage. Finally, higher NCA enforceability exacerbates gender and...	Matthew S. Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, Michael Lipsitz
10	2022	Non-competes and innovation: Evidence from medical devices ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies non-compete enforceability as a labor market friction shaping innovation outcomes, which is central to how worker mobility affects knowledge diffusion and growth. Its distinction between exploitative and exploratory innovation also speaks to the direction and quality of technology creation under mobility restrictions, making it highly pertinent to the project’s core themes. Despite two decades of research on non-competes, whether non-competes promote or inhibit innovation remains an open question. The lack of consensus rests on not only the theoretical ambiguity but also the empirical limitations. Marshalling data on introductions of new medical devices as the direct measure of innovations in the medical devices industry and decomposing innovations according to their exploitative or exploratory natures, this work shows that an increase in the enforceability of noncompetes is associated with a higher rate of exploitative innovations and a lower rate of exploratory innovations. Further analysis shows that through such a shift of attention in the innovation...	Fenglong Xiao
10	2016	Gains from others’ losses: Technology trajectories and the global division of firms ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility, firm offshoring decisions, and how those movements shift the direction and location of innovation within an emerging technology. It speaks to the project’s core questions about knowledge diffusion through worker movement, firm-level retention and hiring dynamics, and the productivity and innovation consequences of labor-market and organizational frictions. This paper offers new insights into the role of firms versus individuals in driving technology directions, and the extent to which human capital may be lost during industrial shifts. We explore in particular whether (1) firms who move manufacturing offshore slow U.S.-based R&D activities in an emerging technology and (2) the inventors originally within these offshoring firms, leave, and continue innovating in the emerging technology at different institutions. We focus on the 28 leading U.S. optoelectronic component manufactures for telecommunications and the inventors who patent at these firms. In the case of U.S. optoelectronic component manufacturers for telecommunications, offshoring is...	Chia-Hsuan Yang, Rebecca Nugent, Erica R.H. Fuchs
10	2017	The Effect of Patent Protection on Inventor Mobility ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility and how patent protection affects the likelihood that employee-inventors change employers, which is central to understanding worker movement as a channel for technology diffusion. Its findings on patents converting innovation skills into firm-specific human capital speak directly to labor market frictions, retention incentives, and the extent to which mobility facilitates or inhibits knowledge spillovers. This article investigates the effect of patent protection on the mobility of early-career employee-inventors. Using data on patent applications filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office between 2001 and 2012 and examiner leniency as a source of exogenous variation in patent protection, we find that one additional patent granted decreases the likelihood of changing employers, on average, by 23%. This decrease is stronger when the employee has fewer coinventors, works outside the core of the firm, and produces more basic-research innovations. These findings are consistent with the idea that patents turn innovation-related skills into patent-holder-specific human capital. This paper was...	Eduardo Melero, Neus Palomeras, David Wehrheim
10	2022	Foreign direct investment and product quality in host economies ↗ This paper is directly about worker mobility as a conduit for knowledge diffusion from foreign-invested firms to domestic firms, which is central to the project’s focus on technology spillovers through labor movement. It also quantifies how FDI-trained workers transfer skill and raise domestic product quality, making it highly relevant to questions about mobility frictions, spillovers, and aggregate innovation effects. Abstract We examine, both theoretically and empirically, how the presence of FDI affects product quality of domestic firms through worker mobility. Mobility of more productive workers from foreign‐invested to domestic firms lowers the cost of production and contributes to improvement in the quality of goods produced by domestic firms. Profit maximisation by firms yields a structural relationship between unobserved product quality and observed revenue, which allows us to identify the impact of FDI on product quality. We use the theoretical model to frame empirical estimation, where we propose a novel approach to correct for sample selection bias. Under some mild assumptions, a set of...	Sajid Anwar, Sizhong Sun
10	2021	Labor Market Dynamics When Ideas are Harder to Find ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it models endogenous growth through imitation in a frictional labor market, with worker poaching and job-to-job transitions as the mechanism for technology diffusion. It directly speaks to how labor market frictions and mobility shape knowledge transfer, misallocation, firm dynamics, and aggregate growth. This paper evaluates the impact of slowing economic growth on labor market dynamism and misallocation. It provides a model of endogenous growth via imitation in a frictional labor market. The framework accounts for rich data on worker job-to-job transitions as well as stochastic and lifecycle properties of firm growth and job reallocation. High productivity entrants gradually replace obsolescing incumbents by poaching their workers, a process that is intermediated via a frictional labor market. When the likelihood of entrants imitating technologies in the tail of the distribution falls (ideas are harder to find), so does growth. Consistent with US data over the past 30 years, firm entry...	Adrien Bilal, Niklas Engbom, Simon Mongey, et al.
10	2020	Living it up at the Hotel California: Employee Mobility Barriers and Collaborativeness in Firms' Innovation ↗ This paper is directly about how employee mobility barriers shape inventor collaboration and the spillover of innovative knowledge across firms, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also uses quasi-exogenous legal changes in mobility constraints and examines how knowledge complexity conditions spillovers, making it highly relevant for understanding how non-competes and similar frictions affect innovation dynamics. Research has long recognized the importance of collaboration for innovation, but relatively little is known about the strategic drivers of collaborative innovation in firms. We posit that robust collaboration within firms can increase the interfirm mobility of inventors and increase spillovers of innovative knowledge to competitors by mobile inventors. Therefore, by mitigating these value capture hazards associated with collaboration, barriers to employee mobility may induce firms to increase collaborativeness in innovation. Additionally, consistent with the mechanism underlying this proposition, we hypothesize that firms whose innovation entails more complex knowledge, which is known to...	Eunkwang Seo, Deepak Somaya
10	2021	No inventor is an island: Social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how inventor mobility-relevant social connections shape the flow of knowledge across regions and firms, using patent citations as the outcome. It also speaks to the project’s core themes of knowledge diffusion, inventor networks, and the channels through which informal ties can substitute for or complement geographic proximity in technology transfer. Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Facebook friendships. We use a well-established identification strategy that relies on matching inventor citations with citations from examiners. Moreover, we isolate the specific effect of informal connections, above and beyond formal professional ties (co-inventor networks) and geographic proximity. We identify a significant and robust effect of informal ties on patent citations. Further, we find that the effect of geographic proximity on knowledge flows is entirely explained...	Andreas Diemer, Tanner Regan
10	2024	Growing through spinoffs. Corporate governance, entry dynamics, and innovation ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies how employee-created spinoffs transmit ideas from incumbent firms to new entrants, which is a central mechanism of worker-based knowledge diffusion. It also analyzes how knowledge protection and rule of law shape innovation, entry dynamics, and aggregate growth, matching the project’s focus on mobility frictions, spillovers, and economy-wide productivity effects. New firms are often based on ideas that the founders developed while working for incumbent firms. We study the macroeconomic effects of spinoffs through a growth model of product variety expansion, driven by firm entry, and product innovation. Spinoffs stem from conflicts of interest between incumbent firms' shareholders and employees. The analysis suggests that incumbents invest more in product innovation when knowledge protection is stronger. An inverted-U shape relationship emerges, however, between the intensity of spinoff activities and the strength of the rule of law. A calibration experiment indicates that, with a good rule of law, loosening knowledge protection by 53 reduces product...	Maurizio Iacopetta, Raoul Minetti, Pierluigi Murro
10	2012	Making Non-Competes Unenforceable This paper is directly relevant because it focuses on non-compete agreements, a central labor market friction that constrains worker mobility and thereby affects knowledge diffusion across firms. Its argument that unenforceability would promote a free market in labor speaks directly to the project’s questions about how restricting or facilitating movement influences technology transfer, innovation, and growth. The law of employee non-competition agreements is a mess. Differing standards, unpredictability, and uncertainty within and between jurisdictions is the norm. The variability in state law provides a significant incentive on both sides to forum shop when a dispute over a non-compete arises. This forum shopping leads to conflicts of law, and choice of law doctrine does not resolve these disputes in a satisfactory way. Because non-compete law is often a matter of fundamental public policy, the use of escape valves from the operation of conflicts principles means that there is no predictability or certainty in non-compete litigation. The search for favorable law results in races to the...	Viva Moffat
10	2016	The Effects of Knowledge Spillovers through Labor Mobility This paper is directly on point because it studies knowledge spillovers through worker mobility and measures how hiring skilled workers transmits knowledge across firms. It also examines firm performance, wages, competition, and knowledge diffusion, which are central to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and the aggregate effects of worker movement. We estimate the effects of knowledge spillovers on firms’ performance and workers’ wages. We use an innovation support program as an exogenous shock to the knowledge of non-participant firms and an employer-employee dataset to track the mobility of workers—and knowledge diffusion—between firms. We find that non-participants that acquired new knowledge by hiring skilled workers exposed to the program increased employment, the average wage they pay, exports, and productivity. Finally, we find that—depending on the level of competition—a wage premium was paid either by participant or non-participant firms to retain or acquire workers.	Victoria Castillo, Lucas Figal-Garone, Alessandro Maffioli, et al.
10	2024	Labor Contract Law and inventor mobility: evidence from China ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how labor contract law affects inventor mobility, one of the project’s central mechanisms for technology and knowledge diffusion across firms. It also examines heterogeneous effects, mechanisms, and firm outcomes like patent quality and bankruptcy risk, which connect closely to questions about labor-market frictions, innovation, and aggregate productivity. This paper investigates the causal effect of employment protection on inventor mobility. Taking the enactment of China’s Labor Contract Law in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-difference estimate utilizes two-dimensional variations: firm ownership (i.e., SOEs vs. non-SOEs) and year (i.e., before and after 2008). Using combined data on patent applications filed at the State Intellectual Property Office of China and listed manufacturing companies over 2004–2012, we find that the law plays a sizeable positive role in reducing the likelihood of inventor mobility. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher labor intensity, stricter law enforcement, higher...	Guanchun Liu, Yuanyuan Liu, Jinyu Yang, et al.
10	2024	Global Mobile Inventors ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility as a mechanism for cross-border knowledge diffusion, which is central to the project’s focus on how moving workers transmit technology and know-how across firms and countries. It also studies how mobile inventors accelerate local absorption of technology and how return migration affects pioneering patents, making it highly relevant to diffusion, innovation, and the role of skilled labor mobility. The number of Global Mobile Inventors (GMIs), inventors moving across borders during their career, has increased more than tenfold over the past two decades, and the corridors of mobility have shifted towards a growing presence of emerging markets. We document that GMIs that have patented in a given technology before moving are 70% more likely to be among the pioneering inventors in that technology once they arrive at destination, which we interpret as evidence of knowledge diffusion across borders. Returnees, which are typically inventors from emerging markets that go back after having spent some time in the US and other advanced economies, are twice as likely to file pioneering patents...	Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ernest Miguélez, et al.
10	2010	Churning of R&D Personnel and Innovation ↗ This paper is directly about R&D worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge spillovers and innovation, which is central to the project. It also studies how replacement frictions and the nature of knowledge affect the productivity effects of worker movement, closely matching the themes of diffusion, firm dynamics, and mobility costs. This paper explores the role of R&D worker mobility on innovation performance. As one main novelty, we employ churning as a measure for worker mobility. Churning depicts the number of workers which are replaced by new ones. It is a very informative indicator since a firm may be exposed to simultaneous leave and inflow of R&D workers even if the size of R&D employment remains unchanged. Hence, we can separate the effect of replacement from net change in R&D workforce. Our results from estimating various knowledge production functions suggest an inverse u-shaped relationship. The exchange of R&D personnel fosters innovation through inter-firm knowledge spillovers and improved job-match...	Kathrin Mueller, Bettina Peters
10	2019	Knowledge Spillovers in the Mutual Fund Industry Through Labor Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies knowledge spillovers across firms through labor mobility, which is the central mechanism in your project. It also examines how frictions affecting knowledge absorption shape the spillover effect and how worker movement redistributes performance and competitive advantage, closely matching your themes of mobility costs, diffusion, and firm-level outcomes. Abstract Firms’ competitive advantages are unsustainable when competitors hire their employees away to study and recreate those advantages. We document inter-firm knowledge spillovers through labor mobility in the mutual fund industry, which result in performance improvement at the recipient family. This effect intensifies when frictions hampering knowledge absorption at the recipient family are weaker and switching managers had better access to the organization processes at the originating family. Performance deterioration at the originating family, which intensifies when more money chases the newly-transferred knowledge, suggests erosion of its competitive advantage and wealth transfers...	Gjergji Cici, Alexander Kempf, Claudia Peitzmeier
10	2008	Inter-firm labor mobility and knowledge diffusion: a theoretical approach This paper is directly on point: it models inter-firm worker mobility as the channel for knowledge transfer and studies how that mobility affects firm productivity and industry-wide diffusion. It also explicitly analyzes mobility costs, institutions, absorptive capacity, and market structure, which are central to the project’s questions about frictions and the aggregate impact of worker movement on knowledge diffusion. [cat] Analitzem una economia amb dues característiques principals: la mobilitat dels treballadors implica transferència de coneixement i la productivitat de l’empresa augmenta amb l’intercanvi de coneixement. Cada empresa desenvolupa un tipus de coneixement que serà trasmès a la resta de la indústria mitjançant la mobilitat de treballadors. Estudiem dues estructures de mercat laboral i utilitzant un anàlisi comparatiu derivem les implicacions del model. Els resultats revelen com la mobilitat de treballadors depèn en la varietat i nivell del coneixement, la presència de costos de mobilitat, les institucions, la capacitat d’absorvir coneixement per part de les empreses i la mida de la...	Montserrat Vilalta-Bufí
10	2015	What Do We Know of the Mobility of Research Scientists and of its Impact on Scientific Production ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about the mobility of research scientists and its impact on scientific production, which is squarely within the project’s core focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It is likely highly relevant for understanding how skilled worker movement affects technology transfer, innovation, and aggregate output, even if the paper is framed more around scientific rather than firm-level production. No abstract available.	Ana Fernández-Zubieta, Aldo Geuna, Cornelia Lawson
10	2012	Productivity in Innovation: the Role of Inventor Connections and Mobility” This paper is directly about inventor mobility and inventor connections as channels for knowledge transmission and their effects on firms’ innovation productivity, which is central to the project. It also examines the role of geography and dynamic knowledge flows over time, making it highly relevant to understanding how worker movement diffuses technology and affects innovation outcomes. We study the transmission of knowledge arising from working relationships established by inventors, and its impact on firms’ innovation production. The study’s contribution to the literature is twofold. First, we consider those relationships that originate through inventor connections (”multi-applicant” inventors) and inventor mobility. Second, we analyse their effect on companies’ innovation production. The study focuses on the role played by geographical proximity, and the dynamic effects of knowledge flows. The geographical question is dealt with on a detailed level, by measuring knowledge spillovers observed within the same Local Labour System (LLS), between different LLSs of the region...	Donata Favaro, Eniel Ninka, Margherita Turvani
10	2010	Seeking Resources or Seeking Knowledge? A Study of Mobility and Knowledge Creation Using Micro Data ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about mobility and knowledge creation, which is exactly central to the project’s focus on how worker movement transmits knowledge across firms. The micro-data angle also suggests empirically identifying the mechanisms through which mobility affects knowledge diffusion, making it highly relevant. No abstract available.	Prithwiraj Choudhury
10	2006	Give Me Equity or Give Me Death - The Role of Competition and Compensation in Building Silicon Valley ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly points to competition and compensation as mechanisms in building Silicon Valley, which is likely to involve worker mobility, incentives, and knowledge diffusion across firms. Given the Silicon Valley context, it is especially likely to speak to skilled labor, inventor movement, and the role of pay structures such as equity in attracting and retaining innovative workers. No abstract available.	Richard A Booth
10	2021	Do Non-Compete Covenants Influence State Startup Activity? Evidence from the Michigan Experiment ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies non-compete enforcement as a labor market friction shaping startup activity, high-tech employment, and patenting. Its quasi-experimental evidence on how restricting worker mobility affects firm entry, job creation, and innovation maps closely to the project’s core questions about knowledge diffusion and aggregate innovation effects. This paper examines how the enforceability of employee non-compete agreements affects the entry of new establishments and jobs created by these new firms. We use a panel of startup activity for the U.S. states for the period 1977 to 2013. We exploit Michigan's inadvertent policy reversal in 1985 that transformed the state from a non-enforcing to an enforcing state as a quasinatural experiment to estimate the causal effect of enforcement on startup activity. In a difference-in-difference framework, we find little support for the widely held view that enforcement of non-compete agreements negatively affects the entry rate of new firms or the rate of jobs created by new firms. We find that...	Gerald A. Carlino
10	2017	Innovation through new blood ↗ This paper is directly about worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transmission between firms, which is central to the project’s focus on technology and knowledge diffusion through labor movement. It also speaks to firm-level innovation and productivity effects, the role of absorptive capacity, and heterogeneity by firm size, all of which are highly relevant to understanding how mobility frictions shape aggregate outcomes. We model the influence of employee mobility on the transmission of knowledge between firms, assuming human capital to be an important influence on service innovation and firm productivity. To this end, we follow individual workers as they move from firm to firm, controlling for knowledge characteristics (‘absorptive capacity’) of the firm and for regional effects (agglomeration and urbanization). We measure the amount and variety of such flows, and we find statistically significant results; yet the impact of new employees on innovation and productivity seems to come more from the diversity of source firms than from the number of new employees, and effects differ markedly between small and...	Martijn J. Smit
10	2023	An empirical analysis of the impact of semiconductor engineer characteristics on outflows and inflows: evidence from six major semiconductor countries ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies cross-border mobility of semiconductor engineers, which is a core mechanism for technology and knowledge diffusion in your project. Its evidence on inflows, outflows, and specialization-driven migration also speaks to how worker movement reallocates human capital across countries and affects the direction of spillovers. Abstract The impact of cross-border migration of semiconductor engineers has become an important concern for many countries’ economic policies. There has been limited large-scale data analysis regarding the movement of semiconductor engineers between countries. This study creates an original engineer database for six major semiconductor countries (U.S., China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Germany) using bibliographic information on patents and papers to analyze their transnational migration. Multiple logistic analysis is conducted on the impact of engineers’ characteristics such as age, skills, and areas of expertise on outflows and inflows. The analysis reveals that (1) the United States...	Ayano Fujiwara
10	2021	Motivating Inventors: Non-competes, Innovation Value and Efficiency ↗ This paper is directly about non-compete enforcement, inventor mobility, and how labor market restrictions affect the value and direction of innovation, which is central to the project. It provides evidence that tighter mobility constraints reduce patent quality and exploratory innovation despite unchanged R&D spending, speaking to the efficiency and aggregate innovation consequences of worker mobility frictions. Non-compete agreements help protect business investments by restricting worker mobility, thereby increasing firm incentives to invest. Yet, they could damage the efficacy of innovation investments that crucially rest on employee incentives. Exploiting staggered reforms of state non-compete enforcement, I find that patents filed after an increased enforceability are less valuable and exploratory despite no less R&D spending. Inventors whose job prospects are more jeopardized, in a weaker bargaining position, and having greater incentives to switch firms produce patents experiencing greater value losses. These results imply that labor allocative inefficiency owing to mobility restrictions...	Zhaozhao He
10	2016	Locked In? Noncompete Enforceability and the Mobility and Earnings of High-Tech Workers ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how noncompete enforceability affects the mobility of high-tech workers, which is a central friction in knowledge diffusion and worker-driven technology transfer. It also measures wage effects and job spell length, providing direct evidence on how restricting worker movement changes incentives, retention, and the protection of firm-specific knowledge. We examine how the enforceability of noncompete contracts affects the length of job spells and the level of wages. We expect noncompete enforceability to lengthen job spells, but its impact on wages is ambiguous. While noncompete enforceability restores the incentive for employers to invest in human capital, which will increase worker productivity and potentially wages, it also raises exit costs for workers, allowing firms to refuse to match outside offers from competitors, thus dampening their bargaining power to obtain higher wages. We empirically test for these effects using the U.S. matched employer- employee data on the universe of jobs from 30 states between 1991 and 2008. Exploiting...	Natarajan Balasubramanian, Jin Woo Chang, Mariko Sakakibara, et al.
10	2016	REGIONAL TECHNOLOGICAL DYNAMISM AND NONCOMPETE CLAUSES: EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how non-compete enforcement affects skilled worker mobility, industry switching, and the diffusion of technical knowledge across firms and fields. It also links these labor market frictions to regional technological dynamism, exactly matching the project’s focus on how mobility restrictions shape knowledge diffusion and innovation. ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine the causal impact of enforceable covenants not to compete (CNCs) on labor market matching and the technological dynamism of regions. Exploiting the fact that the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act (MARA) of 1985 inadvertently repealed Michigan' s prohibition on CNC enforcement, we show that technical professionals in Michigan became increasingly likely to switch industry relative to similar workers in other U.S. states after prohibition. Workers switching industries after the introduction of MARA also earned lower wages, implying that they shifted into technical fields where their skills from previous employment were less productive. Estimates further show that...	Thor Berger, Carl Benedikt Frey
10	2015	Dynastic Entrepreneurship, Entry, and Non-Compete Enforcement ↗ This paper is directly about non-compete enforcement and employee spinoffs, which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape worker mobility and the diffusion of ideas across firms. It also analyzes welfare and entry effects of mobility restrictions, making it highly relevant to the project’s focus on policy, firm dynamics, and knowledge transfer through entrepreneurial spinouts. We investigate entry in a dynastic entrepreneurship (overlapping generations) environment created by employee spinoffs. Without finance constraints, enforcement of non-compete agreements unambiguously improves social welfare outcomes, and even increases the rate of spinoffs from original firms. Indeed, if employers have all the bargaining power vis-à-vis their employees, optimal entry of original firms and all subsequent employee spinoffs is achieved, despite the fact that the original firm can only negotiate with the first spinoff. However, if employees are unable to buy out their non-compete contracts, enforcement of these agreements shuts down socially profitable spinoff firms...	James E. Rauch
10	2009	Good Work If You Can Get It...Again: Non-Compete Agreements, Occupational Detours, and Attainment ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about non-compete agreements and worker occupational movement, which are central to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and mobility. The mention of "occupational detours" and "attainment" suggests it likely studies how non-competes alter career paths and job outcomes, making it highly relevant for understanding knowledge diffusion through worker movement. No abstract available.	Matt Marx
10	2017	Enforceability of Non-Complete Agreements: When Does State Stifle Productivity? ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about non-compete enforceability and its effects on productivity, which is central to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and worker mobility. It likely examines how restricting employee movement shapes knowledge diffusion, firm performance, and aggregate productivity. No abstract available.	Smriti Anand, Iftekhar Hasan, Priyanka Sharma, et al.
10	2023	Productivity Spillovers of Superior Firms Through Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is directly about knowledge diffusion through worker mobility and estimates productivity spillovers from hiring workers from more productive firms, which is central to the project. Its use of matched employer-employee data and attention to within-sector mobility and firm hiring patterns make it highly relevant to understanding how labor movement transfers knowledge across firms. Knowledge transfers across firms through labor mobility can generate positive productivity spillovers. When workers move from one firm to another, they bring obtained knowledge and experience to the receiving firm. Therefore, labor mobility is expected to have a positive impact on the productivity of enterprises. This study investigates the link between knowledge diffusion and labor mobility using a comprehensive matched employer-employee dataset of the Dutch manufacturing sector. I examine the hypothesis that hiring workers from high-productivity firms increases the productivity of hiring firms. The analysis suggests a positive association between hiring from more productive firms and...	Marzieh Abolhassani
10	2021	Do Co-Worker Networks Increase or Decrease Productivity Differences? ↗ This paper is directly about labor mobility, co-worker networks, and knowledge spillovers as mechanisms shaping technology diffusion and productivity convergence across firms and regions. It also studies how mobility frictions and network information affect the rate and direction of worker movement, making it highly relevant to the project’s core themes. Do labor mobility and co-worker networks contribute to convergence or divergence between regions? Based on the previous literature, labor mobility contributes to knowledge transfer between firms. Therefore, mobility may contribute to decreasing productivity differences, while limited mobility sustains higher differences. The effect of co-worker networks, however, can be two-fold in this process; they transmit information about potential jobs, which may enhance the mobility of workers-even between regions-and this enhanced mobility may contribute to levelling of differences. However, if mobility between regions involves movement costs, co-worker networks may concentrate locally-possibly...	László Lőrincz
10	2023	Holdup, Knowledge Transferability, and Productivity: Theory and Evidence from Knowledge Workers* ↗ This paper is directly about how labor market frictions shape knowledge transfer by workers and how those frictions affect worker effort and productivity. Its focus on knowledge workers, patenting, and firing costs as a mechanism for holdup and transferable knowledge makes it highly relevant to worker mobility, spillovers, and diffusion in the research project. This article studies how firing costs affect the productivity of knowledge workers. We develop a holdup model in which workers are essential to knowledge transfer between firms and show that if the worker's knowledge stock is sufficiently transferable to competing firms, an increase in firing costs inhibits the firm's ability to hold up the worker and thereby leads to higher effort. We consider the passage of the wrongful discharge laws in the US as an exogenous increase in firing costs and test our theory using data on patents filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).	Emre Ekinci, David Wehrheim
10	2009	The Effect of Collaboration Network on Inventors' Job Match, Productivity and Tenure ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies inventors’ job matches, productivity, and tenure, which are central outcomes in worker mobility and knowledge diffusion research. The mention of collaboration networks suggests it may also speak to how inventor relationships shape technology transfer across firms, although the exact institutional focus is uncertain without an abstract. No abstract available.	Ryo Nakajima, Ryuichi Tamura, Nobuyuki Hanaki
10	2023	Protect or Prevent? Non-Compete Agreements and Innovation ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about non-compete agreements and innovation, which are central to the project’s focus on labor market frictions that shape worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It is likely to analyze how restricting employee movement affects inventive activity, spillovers, and possibly firm or aggregate innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	Emma Rockall, Kate Reinmuth
10	2024	Non-compete agreements, innovation value and efficiency ↗ This paper is directly on target because it studies non-compete enforcement as a labor market friction that restricts worker mobility and alters knowledge diffusion and innovation outcomes. It provides evidence that tighter mobility restrictions reduce patent value and exploratory innovation, which speaks to the project’s core questions about how constraints on inventor movement affect technology transfer, firm incentives, and aggregate innovation efficiency. Non-compete agreements help protect business investments by restricting worker mobility, thereby increasing firm incentives to invest. Yet, they could damage the efficacy of such investments by reducing employee incentives and hampering knowledge flows. Exploiting staggered reforms of state non-compete enforcement, I find that patents filed after an increased enforceability are less valuable and exploratory despite no less R&D spending. Inventors whose job prospects are more jeopardized, in a weaker bargaining position, and having greater incentives to switch firms produce patents with greater valuation losses. These results imply that labor allocative inefficiency owing to mobility...	Zhaozhao He
10	2021	Air Pollution-induced Brain Drain: Evidence from Inventor Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge reallocation and diffusion, using pollution as a driver of worker movement. It also links inventor outflows to firm innovation outcomes, which closely matches the project’s focus on how labor mobility affects knowledge diffusion, firm innovation, and aggregate productivity. This study attempts to examine the impact of air pollution on inventor mobility. Specifically, we find that the number of polluting facilities surrounding inventors’ workplaces significantly affects their mobility. To establish causality, we introduce the NOx Budget Trading Program of 2003 as an exogenous shock and find consistent results. We further demonstrate that the air pollution drives inventors to relocate to areas with better air quality. We present several economic mechanisms underlying our findings, including inventors’ career concerns, knowledge generality, and knowledge complementarity. Finally, we show that the net outflow of inventors negatively affects firms’ innovation...	Dongmin Kong, Shasha Liu, Jian Zhang
10	2011	Value of invention, prolific inventor productivity and mobility: evidence from five countries, 1975-2002 This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility across firms and fields and links that mobility to inventor productivity and the value of inventions. Its findings speak to how worker movement affects knowledge diffusion, specialization, and innovation outcomes, which are central to the project. The aim of this paper is to provide new insights into (1) the determinants of the value of inventions and (2) the role that mobility plays in the behavior of prolific inventors, whom we identify based on the number of patents exceeding a threshold of productivity. We examine mobility in two dimensions: from firm to firm (inter-firm) and from one technical field to another. We exploit data on patents filed by inventors from five countries (France, the UK, Germany, the US and Japan) in the US Patent and Trademark office during the period from 1975 to 2002. From our regressions we obtain a rich set of results. In particular we show that: (1) as predicted by evolutionary theory, inventor...	William R. Latham, Christian Le Bas, Dmitry Volodin
10	2022	Relaxing Identifying Assumptions: An Application to First Patents and Employee Mobility ↗ [Title only] The title directly links patent outcomes with employee mobility, which is central to your project’s focus on how worker movement transmits knowledge and affects innovation. The phrase “Relaxing Identifying Assumptions” suggests an empirical study likely about causal inference in mobility-and-patent data, making it highly relevant to non-compete, inventor mobility, and technology diffusion questions. No abstract available.	Justin Frake, Anthony Gibbs, Brent Goldfarb, et al.
10	2010	Communicating Technical Knowledge This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how the cost of communicating technical knowledge shapes innovation, employee mobility, and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. It also speaks to how mobility, knowledge exchange, and policy affect innovation incentives and the geographic localization of inventive activity, which are central to the project. In patent theory, the cost of communicating technical knowledge is small. In human capital theory, it is large. But evidence suggests that these costs are actually endogenous. Firms invest in reducing communication costs, but only when technology is sufficiently advanced. This can make competition different for early stage technologies: patents do not increase innovation incentives, employee mobility matters and inventors might choose to freely exchange knowledge. Behavior and optimal policy differ then. Endogenous communication costs help explain changes in patent propensity, in the geographic localization of innovation and why successful developing countries have difficulty moving to the...	James Bessen
10	2023	Labor market regulations, innovation and technological change ↗ This chapter is directly relevant because it surveys how labor market regulations affect innovation, technological change, productivity growth, and especially knowledge spillovers. It explicitly discusses reduced labor mobility, search frictions, skill mismatch, and contractual frictions as mechanisms that shape the diffusion of technical knowledge and firms’ incentives to automate or invest in new technologies. This chapter surveys the literature on the effects labor market regulations on innovation, technological change and productivity growth. We consider several channels whereby labor regulations can impact innovation by increasing nonwage labor costs. In particular, the increased incentives for directed labor-saving technological change that raises capital intensity due to labor market distortions, are discussed. We also review the literature on the impact of skill biased technological change on employment and the labor share in both developed and developing countries. Evidence is provided that search costs and skill mismatch due to contractual frictions impinge on technological change and...	Pontus Braunerhjelm, Johan Eklund, Maurice Kügler
10	2015	Productivity Spillovers Through Labor Mobility in Search Equilibrium ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about productivity spillovers generated by labor mobility, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement transmits knowledge across firms. The mention of search equilibrium also suggests a formal labor market friction/matching framework, making it highly relevant for studying how mobility frictions shape diffusion and aggregate productivity. No abstract available.	Tom‐Reiel Heggedal, Espen R. Moen, Edgar Preugschat
10	2025	Indirect effects of R&D subsidies: labor mobility as a channel for knowledge spillovers ↗ This paper is directly about labor mobility as a channel for knowledge spillovers, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses technology and knowledge across firms. It also studies how an innovation policy intervention (R&D subsidies) affects spillovers through employee mobility and spinoffs, making it highly relevant for understanding policy effects on diffusion, firm performance, and aggregate innovation outcomes. While research and development (R&D) spillovers have long been a central argument for the public support of private R&D activities, less is known about the existence and magnitude of innovation policy-induced spillovers. This paper presents a quasi-experimental analysis of the spillover effects of Eurostars R&D subsidies granted to small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) from 2008 to 2019. We measure spillover effects by relying on employee mobility either between established firms or into employee entrepreneurship. We employ a combination of regression discontinuity (RD) design and difference-in-differences (DiD) methods for causal identification. We find no significant difference in the rate...	Abdulaziz Reshid, Erik Hegelund, Peter Svensson
10	2024	The effect of employee mobility on firm innovation ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how employee mobility affects firm innovation, including patent quantity, patent quality, and innovation efficiency. Its focus on labor mobility as a driver of knowledge transfer and innovation, plus evidence from a quasi-experimental shock, matches the project's core interests in worker movement, spillovers, and the innovation effects of mobility frictions. Abstract We study the effect of employee mobility on firm innovation. Using an occupation‐based measure of employee mobility, we find that firms with more mobile workforces are associated with greater patent quantity and quality and higher innovation efficiency. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher labor intensity, greater business diversification, and lower unionization rates. Both the private market value of innovation and the effectiveness of innovation to generate revenues increase with higher employee mobility. Consistent results are found using a quasi‐experimental shock, which helps address endogeneity concerns. Our findings suggest that employee mobility has a...	Stephen J. Ciccone, Huimin Li, Yixin Liu
10	2025	The role of social ties in spreading innovation: Evidence from alien merchant guilds in China ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how social ties facilitate inter-regional knowledge diffusion and innovation, which is central to understanding worker- and inventor-driven spillovers. It also explicitly evaluates inventor mobility as one of the channels and measures how these knowledge flows affect innovation output, making it highly relevant to the project’s themes of diffusion mechanisms and innovation impacts. This paper examines how social ties shape the diffusion of innovation across regions. We focus on social connections formed through participation in Chinese alien merchant guilds, which consist of merchants from the same origin province conducting business in a different host province. Using data on patent citations linked to member firms of inter-provincial guilds, we show that guild establishment significantly increases inter-provincial knowledge flows from the host to the origin province. The effect is stronger and more immediate for knowledge outflows than for knowledge inflows, consistent with the hypothesis that knowledge dissemination is less costly than acquisition. We examine three...	Xiaoquan Wang, Qi Wu, Hong Zhang
10	2017	Knowledge Spillovers ↗ This paper is directly on target because it focuses on knowledge spillovers as a mechanism for economic growth and explicitly highlights inventor mobility as a key driver of spillover transmission. Its emphasis on geographic localization and social networks also aligns closely with the project’s interest in how labor market frictions and worker movement shape the diffusion of technology and knowledge. Knowledge spillovers enable an actor to access knowledge generated by another without full (or perhaps any) compensation. Knowledge spillovers are important because they are central to economic growth. In addition, they are strategically important to knowledge-intensive firms. Recent improvements in measurement have enabled scholars to report three robust empirical findings about knowledge spillovers: (1) they are geographically localized; (2) they are influenced by inventor mobility; and (3) social networks enable them to overcome geographic distance.	Ajay Agrawal
10	2018	Knowledge Fit and Productivity Gains from Employee Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about employee mobility and suggests a focus on how matching workers’ knowledge to firms generates productivity gains through movement across employers. It is highly likely to speak to knowledge diffusion, labor market frictions, and firm-level productivity effects, which are central to the project. No abstract available.	Gaétan de Rassenfosse, Karin Hoisl
10	1997	How Silicon Valley Has Eliminated Trade Secrets (and Why This is Efficient This paper is directly about worker mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion, focusing on how weak enforcement of trade secret restrictions enables high-turnover labor markets in Silicon Valley. It is highly relevant to the project’s themes of non-compete and proprietary-information frictions, inventor/engineer mobility, and the productivity and innovation effects of policies that constrain or facilitate employee movement. There is a tension or incompatibility between our stylized picture of work in Silicon Valley and the law of trade secrets and proprietary information. Professional work in Silicon Valley involves employees changing jobs frequently, either to rival firms or startups (see AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage), while the law of trade secrets conceptualizes all information about how to do jobs, that is not generally known, as the property of the employer, and awards employers injunctions and damages against departing employees who disclose or might disclose such trade secrets. It is obvious that Silicon Valley could not have developed its high velocity labor market if California courts...	Alan Hyde
10	2025	Appropriated growth ↗ This paper is directly about worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge appropriation and the effects of mobility restrictions, including non-compete enforcement, on firms’ intangible investment and turnover. It also links labor market frictions to incentive provision, retention, and optimal regulation, which are central to the project’s questions about knowledge diffusion, firm behavior, and aggregate implications. We assess how labor mobility affects intangible investment in a dynamic agency model featuring both knowledge appropriation and moral hazard. We argue that restricting worker mobility, while reducing employees’ appropriation of firm intangible capital, can hurt their incentives to exert effort. Our calibration to U.S. data targets responses of employee turnover and firms’ intangible investment to variations in workers’ outside option values, identified through exogenous shocks to non-compete enforcement. The model simulation shows that knowledge spillovers mitigate the costs of incentive provision when agency frictions are severe, and the optimal labor mobility regulation should balance...	Yuchen Chen, Xuelin Li, Richard T. Thakor, et al.
10	2024	Clause and Effect: Theory and Field Experimental Evidence on Noncompete Clauses ↗ This paper is directly on topic because it studies noncompete clauses as a labor market friction that limits worker mobility and quantifies how removing them changes movement between firms. Its field experimental evidence on earnings, mobility, and knowledge leakage speaks directly to the project’s core questions about how restricting movement affects technology diffusion and worker reallocation. <div> <div> <div> <div> <p>We study worker noncompete clauses in a large field experiment with two finance firms. Across ~14,000 job offers to freelance recruiters on short-term contracts, we randomize wages and the presence, salience, and duration of noncompetes. Removing a noncompete increases mobility between competing employers by 36-52% and raises workers' total earnings from the two firms by 12-17%. We find no evidence---rejecting even small effects---that removing noncompetes generates secret leakage. We also find no evidence that workers choose noncompete jobs for higher pay. Many workers appear unaware of noncompetes before firms' post-employment communication. The results align...	Bo Cowgill, Brandon Freiberg, Evan Starr
10	2022	Online Appendix to 'Optimal Regulation of Noncompete Contracts' (Not for Publication) ↗ [Title only] This appendix is directly about the optimal regulation of noncompete contracts, which is a central labor-market friction affecting worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Even though it is an online appendix rather than the main paper, it is highly likely to contain formal analysis and extensions directly relevant to technology transfer, inventor movement, and innovation incentives. No abstract available.	Liyan Shi
10	2017	Mobility Constraint Externalities: How Noncompetes Shackle the Unconstrained ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about noncompete agreements and mobility constraints, which are central to the project’s focus on worker mobility and labor market frictions. The phrase “externalities” and “unconstrained” suggests an analysis of broader spillover effects on knowledge diffusion, firm dynamics, and possibly aggregate productivity. No abstract available.	Evan Starr, Justin Frake, Rajshree Agarwal
10	2026	The Economics of Noncompete Clauses ↗ This paper is directly on point because it focuses on noncompete clauses as a labor market friction that restricts worker mobility, which is central to the project’s study of knowledge diffusion through mobile workers. It also reviews evidence on effects on wages, innovation, entrepreneurship, and spillovers across firms and states, matching the project’s interest in aggregate productivity and diffusion consequences of mobility restrictions. For over 600 years, debates over noncompete clauses have centered on whether they function as efficient contracting tools or anticompetitive restraints on workers. This article reassesses that debate in light of recent policy attention and new empirical and theoretical research. Proponents argue that noncompetes are necessary to protect investments in training and trade secrets, increasing productivity and wages. However, recent studies indicate that the widespread use of noncompetes—frequently extending beyond roles involving sensitive information—and their enforceability lower mobility, wages, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Moreover, in many cases, less restrictive contractual terms...	Evan Starr
10	2016	Patterns and Determinants of Inventorss Mobility Across European Urban Areas ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about inventor mobility, which is one of the central channels in the project’s study of knowledge diffusion across firms and places. The focus on patterns and determinants across European urban areas also suggests relevance for understanding how labor market frictions and geography shape the movement of skilled workers and the spread of technology. No abstract available.	Cllment Gorin
10	2006	Does Mobility Increase the Productivity of Inventors? New Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Design ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about inventor mobility and its effect on productivity, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. The quasi-experimental design also suggests causal evidence on how mobility affects innovation outcomes, making it highly relevant. No abstract available.	Karin Hoisl
10	2006	Does Mobility Increase the Productivity of Inventors? ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how inventor mobility affects inventive productivity and tacit knowledge transfer, which are central mechanisms in the project. Its focus on heterogeneous gains from moving across the performance distribution is also highly relevant for understanding which workers benefit most from mobility and how knowledge diffusion may vary by inventor type. Although labor mobility has been recognized as a key mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge, prior research on inventors has so far hardly discussed the impact of a move on inventive performance. Additionally, existing research has neglected the differences in gains from a move between high and lower performing inventors. This paper adds to the current R&D literature by presenting a jointly estimated quantile regression to compare the coefficients of the explanatory variables at different points of the performance distribution. Additionally, dummy variables are used to compare inventive performance prior and in the aftermath of a move. Results reveal that inventors at the upper end of...	Karin Hoisl
10	2017	Human Capital as Intellectual Property? Non-Competes and the Limits of IP Protection This paper is directly on target because it focuses on non-compete agreements as a labor market friction that shapes worker mobility, which is central to the project’s study of knowledge diffusion through employee movement. It also speaks to the innovation and growth consequences of restricting mobility by framing non-competes as tools for protecting intellectual property and evaluating their effects on human capital, firm incentives, and spillovers. Non-compete agreements have become increasingly common in recent years, imposed on twenty to forty percent (or more) of employees in some industries, both in the knowledge-intensive fields where they might be expected but also in the service industries on low-wage workers. As non-competes have proliferated, they have become increasingly controversial. Much of the discussion revolves around whether the agreements help or hinder innovation and economic growth. While this is also accompanied by some concern about the effect of non-competes on employees, little attention has been paid to the fact that employers use non-competes as tools for protecting intellectual property and in doing so treat...	Viva Moffat
10	2023	Measuring the Characteristics and Employment Dynamics of U.S. Inventors ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about inventors and their employment dynamics in the U.S., which is central to understanding worker mobility as a channel for technology and knowledge diffusion. It is likely highly relevant for studying inventor movement, firm-to-firm spillovers, and how labor market frictions shape innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
10	2023	Labor Market Dynamics When Ideas Are Harder to Find ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies endogenous growth driven by imitation in a frictional labor market, where worker poaching and job-to-job transitions transmit ideas from incumbents to entrants. It directly speaks to how labor market frictions and mobility shape technology diffusion, firm dynamics, misallocation, and aggregate productivity growth. This paper evaluates the impact of slowing economic growth on labor market dynamism and misallocation. It provides a model of endogenous growth via imitation in a frictional labor market. The framework accounts for rich data on worker job-to-job transitions as well as stochastic and lifecycle properties of firm growth and job reallocation. High productivity entrants gradually replace obsolescing incumbents by poaching their workers, a process that is intermediated via a frictional labor market. When the likelihood of entrants imitating technologies in the tail of the distribution falls (ideas are harder to find), so does growth. Consistent with US data over the past 30 years, firm entry...	Adrien Bilal, Niklas Engbom, Simon Mongey, et al.
10	2013	Productivity Spillovers Through Labor Mobility This paper is directly on point because it studies productivity spillovers through labor mobility, with firms innovating or imitating by hiring workers from innovating firms in a search-friction framework. It also analyzes policy tools that affect mobility and knowledge diffusion, including non-compete covenants, quit fees, and wage commitment, which map closely to the project’s focus on frictions, worker movement, and aggregate welfare effects. Do firms have the right incentives to innovate in the presence of productivity spillovers? This paper proposes an explicit model of spillovers through labor flows in a framework with search frictions. Firms can choose to innovate or to imitate by hiring a worker from a firm that has already innovated. We show that if innovation firms can commit to long-term wage contracts with their workers, productivity spillovers are fully internalized. If firms cannot commit to long-term wage contracts, there is too little innovation and too much imitation in equilibrium. Our model is tractable and allows us to analyze welfare effects of various policies in the limited commitment case. We find that...	Tom‐Reiel Heggedal, Espen R. Moen
10	2016	Essays on the Incentives for Innovation and Voluntary Knowledge Transfer This paper is directly on point because it studies voluntary knowledge transfer through technology licensing and inventor job transitions, which are central mechanisms of worker-mediated technology diffusion in your project. It also analyzes how product market competition, bargaining power, and IP policy shape innovation, knowledge spillovers, and growth, closely matching your themes of labor mobility frictions, diffusion direction, and aggregate innovation effects. In the following essays I study the determinants of firms' incentives to innovate and voluntarily transfer knowledge to other firms. Technology licensing and inventor job transitions are two examples of knowledge diffusion that takes place voluntarily between firms in a market. In this context, the incidence of transfer will depend on product market competition. I ask how changes in intellectual property policies affect voluntary knowledge transfer and innovation across different degrees of product substitutability. I also investigate the empirical relationship between the incidence of knowledge transfer and substitutability.In the first chapter, I use a two-stage duopoly game of innovation...	Dennis William Kuo
10	2019	Markets for Knowledge ↗ This chapter is directly about knowledge diffusion mechanisms, with one of its five core markets being labor mobility, which is central to your project. It also situates worker movement alongside licensing, alliances, and M&A as channels for transferring tacit knowledge and firm capabilities, making it highly relevant to questions about frictions, policy, and innovation. Abstract Markets for knowledge are increasingly important to innovation, economic growth, and international competitiveness. This chapter examines five distinct markets through which knowledge can be exchanged: the market for codified knowledge (licensing), the market for tacit knowledge (alliances), the market for encapsulated knowledge (sale/purchase of sophisticated products), the market for workers’ knowledge (labor mobility), and the market for firm-wide knowledge or capabilities (mergers and acquisitions). For each type of market, the chapter considers the implications for international economic activity and governance.	Brian S. Silverman
10	2013	Money on the Table? Firms' and Workers' Gains from Productivity Spillovers Through Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies knowledge and productivity spillovers transmitted through worker mobility and quantifies how much firms and workers gain from those spillovers. Its findings speak to core themes in your project, including the efficiency of labor markets as channels of technology diffusion, wage capture versus firm retention of spillover gains, and the implications of mobility frictions or market imperfections. Money on the Table? Firms’ and Workers’ Gains from Productivity Spillovers through Worker Mobility We estimate how much of the gains from productivity spillovers through worker mobility is retained by the hiring firms, by the workers who bring spillovers, and by the other workers. Using linked employer-employee data from Danish manufacturing for the period 1995-2007, we find that at least two-thirds of the total output gain of 0.11% per year is netted by the firms, while the workers who bring spillovers receive at most 6% of it as the wage premium. The large share retained by the firms implies that spillovers through worker mobility are mostly a positive externality to them. NON-TECHNICAL...	Andrey Stoyanov, Nick Zubanov
10	2025	Trade Sanctions and Local Inventor Mobility: Evidence from the US-China Tech Battle ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility, a core mechanism in technology and knowledge diffusion. The focus on trade sanctions in the US-China tech battle also suggests an analysis of how policy shocks affect the movement of skilled workers and the resulting innovation spillovers. No abstract available.	Di Lu, Qi Wu, Jinyu Yang
10	2017	'Another Roof, Another Proof': How Mobility Explains Individual Productivity in Science ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about mobility and individual productivity in science, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for knowledge diffusion. It likely speaks to how changing institutions or locations affects scientists’ output, making it highly relevant to mobility frictions, spillovers, and innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	Valentina Tartari, Francesco Di Lorenzo, Benjamin A. Campbell
10	2026	Labor Mobility Restrictions and Exploratory Innovation: Evidence from the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how legal restrictions on inventor mobility affect knowledge diffusion, inventor departures, and firm innovation outcomes. It speaks to the project’s core themes by showing how mobility frictions change the direction and quality of innovation through retention of tacit knowledge and altered technology spillovers. We examine how legal restrictions on inventor mobility shape the composition of corporate innovation. Exploiting the staggered adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine by U.S. state courts between 1980 and 2021, we find that affected firms reweight their patent portfolios toward exploratory research in new technological domains and away from exploitative refinements of their existing knowledge base. The compositional shift is supported by direct evidence on the underlying labor-mobility mechanism: following adoption, fewer of a firm's inventors depart for technologically related peer firms. Consistent with this retention effect, firms accumulate a larger share of star inventors and...	Jin Wang
10	2026	Intangible assets and imperfections in product and labor markets ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how intangible assets, worker poaching, search frictions, and non-compete agreements shape the transfer of rents through labor mobility. It connects labor market imperfections to knowledge diffusion, firm incentives to create intangible assets, and wage/markup outcomes, which are central to the project’s core themes. This paper develops a micro-founded framework linking price-cost and wage markups to intangible assets. Intangible assets, once created, are a source of firm rents. Owing to limits to enforceable ownership and the non-rival nature of knowledge, these rents can be both retained by the origin firm and transferred to a competitor through poaching of workers. Search and matching frictions affect labor mobility and result in bargaining over rents between the firm and the worker. This environment generates hold-up in intangible asset creation and motivates rent sharing. Under non-compete agreements, poached workers face start delays that weaken outside options. Using microdata from the...	Eric J. Bartelsman, Sabien Dobbelaere, Alessandro Zona Mattioli
10	2025	Acquiring Human Capital: Do Non-Competes Help? ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about non-compete agreements and human capital acquisition, which are central to how labor market frictions shape worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It is highly likely to address whether restricting worker movement affects firm incentives, skill transfer, and broader innovation or productivity outcomes. No abstract available.	Dongryeol Lee
10	2025	Natural Disasters and the Real Effect of Skilled Labor Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about skilled labor mobility and its real economic effects, which aligns closely with the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for technology and knowledge diffusion. The natural disasters context likely provides exogenous variation in mobility, making it especially relevant for studying how labor market disruptions affect firm performance, spillovers, and aggregate productivity. No abstract available.	Yuna Heo, S. Ghon Rhee
10	2014	Essays in Status, Trade, and Knowledge Diffusion The third chapter is directly on point: it studies how worker mobility between workplaces speeds the diffusion of ideas, using linked worker-location data and a dynamic location-choice model. Its counterfactuals on labor mobility, knowledge spread, and international movement align closely with the project’s focus on mobility frictions, knowledge diffusion, and aggregate effects on innovation and growth. Eachof the three chapters in this dissertation is basedon an empirical researchpaper. While the topic of each chapter is different, they are linked bymethodology. Each chapter develops a structural model of economic interaction, applies econometric techniques to estimate model parameters from data, and then uses the estimated model for policy analysis. In the first chapter, I modify a recent theoretical model of conspicuous consumption to empirically measure the importance of peer beliefs to Americans and Chinese. In the model, a consumer cares not only about the direct utility she receives from consumption, but also about the way her consumption pattern affects her peer group’s belief...	David Jinkins
10	2025	Declining Business Dynamism and Worker Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title appears directly centered on worker mobility, one of the project’s core mechanisms, and likely studies how changes in mobility relate to broader firm dynamism and economic reallocation. It is highly relevant because declining business dynamism often connects to frictions in labor markets, job switching, and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. No abstract available.	William Carter Bryson
10	2026	Hiring to Follow: Inventor Mobility and Product-MarketConvergence in the Pharmaceutical Industry ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility as a mechanism for transferring source-firm knowledge across firms, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also examines how mobility frictions affect diffusion and firm outcomes using a quasi-natural experiment on non-compete-like constraints, making it highly relevant to questions about labor market frictions, innovation, and aggregate productivity consequences. We study whether inventor mobility enables firms to reposition themselves in product market space. We argue that mobile inventors transfer source-firm-specific knowledge that helps hiring firms move their product portfolios closer to those of the firms from which they recruit. Using a firm-pair-year panel of U.S. pharmaceutical firms from 1998 to 2020, we combine text-based product similarity measures from 10-K filings with inventor mobility inferred from USPTO patent records. We find that inventor mobility significantly increases product similarity between hiring and source firms. Exploiting the staggered state-level rejection of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine as a quasi-natural...	Di Cui, Mingfa Ding, Yikai Han, et al.
10	2018	Trade Secrets and Innovation: Evidence from the "Inevitable Disclosure" Doctrine This paper is directly about how restricting inventor mobility through employer-friendly trade secret protection affects innovation, which is central to the project. It provides causal evidence on a legal barrier to worker movement and speaks to the mechanisms linking labor mobility, knowledge diffusion, and inventive output. Does heightened employer-friendly trade secrecy protection help or hinder innovation? By examining U.S. state-level legal adoption of a doctrine allowing employers to curtail inventor mobility if the employee would "inevitably disclose" trade secrets, we investigate the impact of a shifting trade secrecy regime on individual-level patenting outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences design taking un-affected U.S. inventors as the comparison group, we find strengthening employer-friendly trade secrecy adversely affects innovation. We then investigate why. We do not find empirical support for diminished idea recombination from suppressed inventor mobility as the operative mechanism. While...	Iwan Barankay, Andrea Contigiani, David Hsu
10	2023	Air Pollution-Induced Brain Drain: Evidence from Inventor ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies inventor mobility as a channel of knowledge reallocation, using pollution shocks to explain why inventors move across locations and firms. It also links mobility to firms’ innovation outcomes and discusses mechanisms such as career concerns and knowledge characteristics, which aligns closely with the project’s focus on how frictions and incentives shape technology diffusion and growth. This study attempts to examine the impact of air pollution on inventor mobility. Specifically, we find that the number of polluting facilities surrounding inventors’ workplaces significantly affects their mobility. To establish causality, we introduce the NOx Budget Trading Program of 2003 as an exogenous shock and find consistent results. We further demonstrate that the air pollution drives inventors to relocate to areas with better air quality. We present several economic mechanisms underlying our findings, including inventors’ career concerns, knowledge generality, and knowledge complementarity. Finally, we show that the net outflow of inventors negatively affects firms’ innovation...	Shasha Liu, Dongmin Kong, Jian Zhang
10	2024	Inventor Returns and Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about inventor mobility, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement transmits knowledge and technology across firms. The word "returns" also suggests an empirical or theoretical analysis of the effects of mobility on innovation, making it highly likely to be closely relevant. No abstract available.	Dietmar Harhoff, David Heller, Paul P. Momtaz
10	2008	Inventor Mobility and Knowledge Transmission in Nanotechnology This paper directly studies inventor mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion across firms, which is one of the core mechanisms in your project. It provides direct evidence that moving inventors transmit knowledge between firms, making it highly relevant to worker mobility, spillovers, and technology diffusion. Using U.S. patent records in nanotechnoloy, we study the relationship between inventor mobility among firms and knowledge diffusion. We find evidence consistent with a story that, in one important nanotechnology subfield, when inventors move among firms they spread knowledge. In particular, we find that if we consider any two patents in the "Chemicals, misc." subclass, A and B, where A and B are assigned to different firms and where A is granted after B, patent A is more likely to cite patent B if the patent A firm employs an inventor who earlier worked for the patent B firm.	Jinyoung Kim, Sangjoon John Lee, Gerald Marschke
10	2014	Inventors' Mobility and R&D Spillovers Across Firms ↗ [Title only] The title directly matches the project’s central themes: inventor mobility, and its role in R&D spillovers across firms. It is highly likely to analyze how worker movement transmits knowledge and affects firm-level innovation and diffusion. No abstract available.	Davide Malacrino, Pietro Tebaldi
10	2026	Born Different: Entrepreneurship through Inventor Mobility, Innovation, and Growth ↗ [Title only] This title is directly about inventor mobility as a channel for entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth, which aligns almost perfectly with the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. It is very likely to examine how mobility affects firm creation, spillovers, and aggregate innovation outcomes, making it highly relevant. No abstract available.	Salomé Baslandze, Ia Vardishvili
10	2025	<div> The Hidden Cost of Talent Wars: <span>How Labor Competition Distorts Corporate Innovation Strategy</span></div> ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how competition for inventors and poaching risk affect firms’ innovation incentives, especially the direction and quality of R&D. It also uses inventor mobility and labor protection laws to identify a labor-market channel, making it highly relevant to worker mobility, labor frictions, and knowledge diffusion. We study a hidden cost of talent clustering. While agglomeration can foster knowledge spillovers, it also intensifies competition for inventors and may weaken incumbents' incentives to pursue long-horizon research. We develop a model in which the entry of large high-technology firms into local labor markets raises poaching risk, shifting incumbents away from generic innovation and toward more defensive innovation that is more commercially oriented and easier to protect. Empirically, we examine innovation-focused establishment openings by S&P 500 high-technology firms and construct counterfactual entry locations using a convolutional neural network combined with propensity score matching...	Wenchuan Zhao, Wentao Li
10	2015	The Complex Relationship between Value of Invention, Prolific Inventor Productivity and Mobility: a Five Countries Analysis, 1975-2002 This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility across firms and its effect on inventor productivity and invention value, which is central to understanding how worker movement transmits knowledge and technology. Its cross-country patent-based evidence on inter-firm mobility and technological mobility also speaks directly to the project’s themes of knowledge diffusion, innovation outcomes, and the role of labor-market frictions in shaping inventive performance. The aim of this paper is to provide new insights into (1) the determinants of the value of inventions and (2) the role that mobility plays in the behavior of prolific inventors, whom we identify based on the number of patents exceeding a threshold of productivity. We examine mobility in two dimensions: from firm to firm (inter-firm) and from one technical field to another. We exploit data on patents filed by inventors from five countries (France, UK, Germany, us and Japan) in the uspto during the period from 1975 to 2002. From our regressions, we show that: (1) as predicted by evolutionary theory, inventor productivity is a positive determinant of invention value, (2) inter-firm mobility is...	William Latham, Christian Le Bas, Dmitry Volodin
10	2024	Inventor Mobility After the Fall of the Berlin Wall ↗ This paper is directly about inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge transfer, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses technology across firms and regions. It also studies how institutional shocks and informal frictions shape inventors’ mobility, inventive continuation, and spatial relocation, aligning closely with the project’s interest in labor market frictions and the diffusion consequences of worker movement. This study examines the inter-organizational and spatial mobility patterns of East German inventors following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Existing research often overlooks the role of informal institutions in the mobility decisions of inventors, particularly regarding access to and transfer of knowledge. To address this gap, we investigate the unique circumstances surrounding the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic, which caused a significant shock to establishment closures and prompted many inventors to change their jobs and locations. Our sample comprises over 25,000 East German inventors, whose patenting careers in reunified Germany post-1990 are traced using a novel...	Paul Hünermund, Ann Hipp
10	2020	Skilled Human Capital and High-Growth Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Inventor Inflows ↗ This paper is directly about skilled worker mobility and inventors as a mechanism for regional knowledge diffusion and firm creation, which is central to the project. It also speaks to spillovers and the local competitive effects of inventor inflows, making it highly relevant for understanding how mobility shapes innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship. To what extent does high-growth entrepreneurship depend on skilled human capital? We estimate the impact of the inflow of inventors into a region on the founding of high-growth firms, instrumenting mobility with the county-level share of millions of inventor surnames in the 1940 U.S. Census. Inventor immigration increases county-level high-growth entrepreneurship; estimates range from 29-55 immigrating inventors for each new high-growth firm, depending on the region and model. We also find a smaller but significant negative effect of inventor arrival on entrepreneurship in nearby counties.	Benjamin Balsmeier, Lee Fleming, Matt Marx, et al.
10	2024	Inventors' Coworker Networks and Innovation ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns inventors, their coworker networks, and innovation, all of which are central to understanding how knowledge diffuses through worker mobility and firm interactions. Even without the abstract, it likely speaks to within-firm social ties and spillovers that shape inventive output, making it closely aligned with the project’s core themes. No abstract available.	Sabrina Lucia Di Addario, Zhexin Feng, Michel Serafinelli
10	2018	Mobility of Highly Skilled Individuals and Local Innovation Activity This paper is directly about skilled worker mobility, focusing on patent inventors as vehicles for knowledge circulation and technology diffusion across locations. It also studies how migration frictions and destination characteristics shape inventor flows and shows that inventor movement positively affects local innovation, making it a core match for the project. This paper studies the drivers of highly skilled migrants across space as well as their impact on local innovation activity. We focus on patent inventors, a specific typology of skilled and innovative individuals \nwho are deeply involved in the production of innovation and are important vehicle of knowledge circulation. Employing patent data to track their moves, we use a gravity model to examine whether geographic, \ntechnological and cultural proximities between countries and country level factors and policies shape the \nflows of these talented individuals. As a comparison, in the same framework, we also analyze the flows \nof non-inventor migrants. Our evidence shows that proximity...	Kyriakos Drivas, Claire Economidou, Dimitris Karamanis, et al.
10	2019	Exit, Voice & Innovation: How Human Capital Policy Equality (& How Inequality Hurts Growth) ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it focuses on how restrictive employment contracts like non-competes, NDAs, and secrecy policies limit worker mobility and thereby impede innovation and knowledge diffusion. It also connects these frictions to firm concentration, entry, and unequal opportunities for inventors and entrepreneurs, matching the project’s core themes on labor-market frictions, inventor mobility, and the growth effects of mobility constraints. If an employee believes her organization is failing, she can take action using one of two strategies: exit (leaving the company) or voice (advocating change from within). But what happens when both exit and voice are restricted? Change itself–including both innovation and equality–suffers. This article, written for the 24th Annual Frankel Lecture, investigates the connections between fields that are usually kept separate: intellectual property and innovation policy; antitrust law and market competition; employment law and contract norms; and anti-discrimination law and equality policy. In employment, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), non-compete agreements, innovation assignment clauses...	Orly Lobel
10	2023	The Labor Market Effects of Legal Restrictions on Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is directly on point because it studies how noncompete enforceability restricts worker mobility, which is a central labor market friction in the project. It also examines broader labor market consequences like earnings, job mobility, and cross-jurisdiction spillovers, all of which are highly relevant to understanding how mobility constraints affect knowledge diffusion and aggregate outcomes. We analyze how the legal enforceability of Noncompete Agreements (NCAs) affects labor markets. Using newly-constructed panel data, we find that higher NCA enforceability diminishes workers’ earnings and job mobility, with larger effects among workers most likely to sign NCAs. These effects are far-reaching: examining local labor markets that cross state borders reveals that enforceability affects workers’ earnings in different legal jurisdictions. Revisiting a classic model of wage-setting, we find that—in contrast to prior evidence—workers facing high enforceability are unable to leverage tight labor markets to increase their wage. Finally, higher NCA enforceability exacerbates gender and...	Matthew S. Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, Michael Lipsitz
10	2026	Worker Heterogeneity and the Effect of Noncompetes on Firm Performance ↗ This paper directly investigates how non-compete enforcement affects worker mobility and knowledge diffusion, specifically focusing on the sorting of productive inventors across firms. It provides empirical evidence on the aggregate productivity impacts of labor market frictions, which is central to the researcher's project. ABSTRACT Using staggered state‐level changes in noncompete enforceability, we document that reduced enforcement increases profitability, valuation, productivity, and plant‐level growth in knowledge‐worker‐intensive firms relative to other firms. Critically, these gains are concentrated among the most productive knowledge‐worker firms, consistent with an assortative matching mechanism in which top firms attract the most productive workers when noncompetes no longer bind. Using inventor‐level data, we find direct evidence of this sorting: more productive inventors migrate toward more productive firms following reductions in enforceability. Consequently, performance dispersion widens across...	Zhaozhao He, M. Babajide Wintoki
9	1995	Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. ↗ [Title only] This is very likely to be highly relevant because it is a classic study of why Silicon Valley outperformed Route 128, with a strong focus on regional institutions, labor mobility, and how culture and competition shape knowledge spillovers. Even without the abstract, the title signals a direct connection to technology diffusion, worker movement, and firm dynamics in innovative clusters. No abstract available.	Paul Starr, AnnaLee Saxenian
9	1989	Cooperation between Rivals: Informal Know-How Trading ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests direct relevance because it focuses on informal know-how trading between rival firms, which is a classic channel of technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers. It likely speaks to how workers, relationships, or interfirm interactions transmit tacit knowledge, making it highly pertinent to worker mobility and labor-market frictions even if mobility is not the sole mechanism. No abstract available.	Eric von Hippel
9	1998	The Persistence and Transfer of Learning in Industrial Settings ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly suggests that knowledge or learning acquired in one industrial setting can persist and be transferred, which is central to worker mobility and technology diffusion. Even without an abstract, it likely speaks to how human capital moves across firms and how industrial experience affects subsequent productivity or innovation. No abstract available.	Linda Argote
9	1989	The Growth and Diffusion of Knowledge ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies decentralized knowledge diffusion and the role of spillovers in determining how information moves across agents, which is central to the project’s focus on technology and knowledge transfer. Although it does not specifically emphasize worker mobility or labor-market frictions like non-competes, its treatment of search externalities, learning, and communication technology directly informs the mechanisms behind diffusion and growth. This paper analyzes a decentralized process for the diffusion of knowledge. In equilibrium, the economy converges from an initial distribution of knowledge over agents to the steady-state distribution, which is unique. Because of the public good aspect of information, too little learning takes place and ideas are implemented too early. The key difference between earlier formulation of search externalities by P. Diamond (1982), D. T. Mortensen (1982), and M. Spence (1984) on the one hand, and the authors' own on the other, is that here spillovers of knowledge depend not only on how hard people are trying, but also on the differences in what they know; if all of us know the same thing, we...	Boyan Jovanovic, Rafael Rob
9	2011	Knowledge spillovers through human mobility across national borders: Evidence from Zhongguancun Science Park in China ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies knowledge spillovers generated by human mobility, specifically returnee entrepreneurs transferring knowledge across borders into local firms. It also examines how firms’ absorptive capacity and multinational R&D affect the diffusion and innovation impact of these mobility-driven spillovers, which is central to the project’s themes of worker movement, knowledge transfer, and productivity effects. This paper investigates the impact of returnee entrepreneurs and their knowledge spillovers on innovation in high-tech firms in China. Using panel data for 1318 high-tech firms in Beijing Zhongguancun Science Park (ZSP) we find that returnee entrepreneurs create a significant spillover effect that promotes innovation in other local high-tech firms. The extent of this spillover effect is positively moderated by the non-returnee firm's absorptive capacity approximated by the skill level of employees. Multinational enterprises' R&D activities positively affect the innovation intensity of non-returnee firms only when these local firms possess the sufficient level of absorptive capacity. Our...	Igor Filatotchev, Xiaohui Liu, Jiangyong Lu, et al.
9	1993	Inter-industry technology flows in the United States ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because inter-industry technology flows are directly about how knowledge and innovations move across firms and sectors, which is central to technology diffusion. Even without explicit mention of labor mobility, the paper is likely to speak to spillovers, diffusion mechanisms, and aggregate productivity effects that are closely related to worker-driven knowledge transfer. No abstract available.	F. M. Scherer
9	2020	Human Capital-Driven Acquisition: Evidence from the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how labor market frictions from the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine affect firms’ ability to acquire human capital through acquisitions, directly tying worker mobility restrictions to knowledge transfer. It also speaks to your themes of mobility costs, retention of key employees, and the use of firm transactions as a mechanism to overcome frictions and access valuable skills. We present evidence that the desire to gain human capital is an important motive for corporate acquisitions. Our tests exploit the staggered recognition of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S. state courts, which prevents employees with trade secret knowledge from working for other firms. We find a significant increase in the likelihood of being acquired for firms headquartered in states that recognize such a doctrine relative to firms headquartered in states that do not. Our result is stronger for firms with greater human capital and for firms whose employees have better ex ante employment mobility. We show that the IDD is positively associated with the retention of target...	Deqiu Chen, Huasheng Gao, Yujing Ma
9	2009	Is inter-firm labor mobility a channel of knowledge spillovers? Evidence from a linked employer-employee panel ↗ This paper is directly about inter-firm worker mobility as a channel of knowledge spillovers, using linked employer-employee data to test how hiring from R&D labs affects productivity and profitability. It is highly relevant to the project’s core themes of worker mobility, diffusion of R&D-generated knowledge, and the firm-level effects of labor-market-mediated spillovers. An employer-employee panel is used to study whether the movement of workers across firms is a channel of unintended diffusion of R&D-generated knowledge. Somewhat surprisingly, hiring workers from others' R&D labs to one's own does not seem to be a significant spillover channel. Hiring workers previously in R&D to one's non-R&D activities, however, boosts both productivity and profitability. This is interpreted as evidence that these workers transmit knowledge that can be readily copied and implemented without much additional R&D effort.	Mika Maliranta, Pierre Mohnen, Petri Rouvinen
9	2008	Ethnic Scientific Communities and International Technology Diffusion ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies a direct mechanism of knowledge diffusion through the mobility and social networks of skilled workers, specifically ethnic scientific and entrepreneurial communities linked to patenting and technology transfer. Its evidence on patent citations and manufacturing output responses to scientific integration with the U.S. frontier speaks directly to how worker mobility and networks shape international technology diffusion and productivity. This study explores the role of U.S. ethnic scientific and entrepreneurial communities for international technology transfer to their home countries. U.S. ethnic researchers are quantified through an ethnic-name database and individual patent records. International patent citations confirm knowledge diffuses through ethnic networks, and manufacturing output in foreign countries increases with an elasticity of 0.1–0.3 to stronger scientific integration with the U.S. frontier. Specifications exploiting exogenous changes in U.S. immigration quotas address reverse-causality concerns. Exercises further differentiate responses by development stages in home countries. Ethnic technology transfers...	William R. Kerr
9	2012	The effect of learning by hiring on productivity ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies interfirm worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer and estimates the productivity gains to recipient firms from hiring knowledgeable workers. Its focus on technicians and highly educated workers, along with structural evidence on value-added effects, directly aligns with the project’s themes of worker mobility, knowledge diffusion, and firm productivity. This article focuses on the phenomenon of interfirm labor mobility as a potential channel for knowledge transfer. Using data from the Danish employer‐employee register covering the period 1995–2005, we investigate how knowledge carriers—technicians and highly educated workers recruited from a donor firm—contribute to knowledge diffusion and enhanced productivity in the hiring (recipient) firm. Structural estimation of the hiring firms' production functions shows that the impact of the recruitment of knowledge carriers on a firm's value added is an increase of 1%–2%. Several robustness checks confirm this finding .	Pierpaolo Parrotta, Dario Pozzoli
9	2017	The Impact of Restricting Labor Mobility on Corporate Investment and Entrepreneurship ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how noncompete enforcement restricts worker mobility and changes the flow of knowledge-intensive employees across firms. It also links those frictions to firm investment and entrepreneurship, which are central outcomes in the project’s focus on technology diffusion, labor market frictions, and aggregate innovation effects. This paper examines how labor mobility restrictions like noncompete agreements affect firms' investment decisions. Using matched employee-employer data from LinkedIn, I show that increases in the enforceability of noncompete agreements lead to widespread declines in employee departures, specifically in knowledge-intensive occupations. Established firms that rely more on these knowledge-intensive occupations increase their investment rate in physical capital. However, new firm entry in corresponding sectors declines. I provide evidence for different mechanisms to explain these patterns. Together, the findings show that labor frictions play an important role in investment decisions.	Jessica Jeffers
9	2018	Mind the gap: Capturing value from basic research through combining mobile inventors and partnerships ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies mobile inventors as a channel for transferring knowledge from basic research into firms, which is central to worker mobility as a mechanism for technology diffusion. It also examines how partnerships with universities complement inventor mobility in shaping the value and effectiveness of knowledge transfer, closely matching the project’s focus on how firm-level strategies and mobility frictions affect diffusion and innovation outcomes. To successfully generate more valuable technologies from accessing basic research knowledge, firms need to combine institutional and individual level bridges to universities and research institutes active in basic research. This combination is particularly important when the new technology builds on scientific prior art. While mobile inventors are needed to transfer and translate basic knowledge into new technologies, partnerships provide the commitment, resources and incentive structure to integrate this basic research knowledge more effectively into the firm's innovation process, thus improving the value capture from mobile inventors. Our findings in the micro-electronics field illustrate...	Bruno Cassiman, Reinhilde Veugelers, Sam Arts
9	2005	"Cross-Firm" Inventors and Social Networks: Localized Knowledge Spillovers Revisited ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly focuses on inventors moving or connecting across firms and on knowledge spillovers, which are central to worker mobility and technology diffusion. The mention of social networks and localized spillovers suggests it likely examines the mechanisms and geography of knowledge transfer, though the exact role of labor market frictions is uncertain from the title alone. No abstract available.	BRESCHI, LISSONI
9	2009	Skill Flow: A Fundamental Reconsideration of Skilled-Worker Mobility and Development ↗ [Title only] The title directly signals a focus on skilled-worker mobility, which is central to the project’s interest in how labor movement transmits knowledge and technology across firms and economies. The phrase "fundamental reconsideration" and "development" suggest it may also address broader mechanisms and policy implications related to mobility, human capital formation, and diffusion. No abstract available.	Michael A. Clemens
9	2019	Mobility Constraint Externalities ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies noncompete agreements as labor market frictions that reduce worker mobility, job offers, and wages, which are central mechanisms in the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Its focus on externalities, entrepreneurship, and firm human capital strategies also speaks directly to how mobility restrictions shape the flow of skills and technology in the economy. Covenants not to compete are often included in employment agreements between firms and employees, justified by each party’s voluntary “freedom to contract.” However, noncompetes may also generate externalities for all individuals in the market, including those who have not signed such agreements. We theorize that enforceable noncompetes increase frictions in the labor market by increasing uncertainty and recruitment costs and by curtailing entrepreneurship. We find that in state-industry combinations with a higher incidence and enforceability of noncompetes, workers—including those unconstrained by noncompetes—receive relatively fewer job offers, have reduced mobility, and experience lower...	Evan Starr, Justin Frake, Rajshree Agarwal
9	2017	Common Institutional Ownership and Diffusion of Innovation ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a paper on how overlapping ownership across firms affects the spread of innovation, which is closely related to technology diffusion and knowledge transfer across organizations. It is likely highly relevant to this project because common institutional ownership can shape firm incentives, information flow, and potentially the mobility or imitation channels through which innovations diffuse. No abstract available.	Leonard Kostovetsky, Alberto Manconi	Other
9	2009	Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a direct focus on invention, innovation clusters, and the movement of innovative activity across locations or groups, which is highly aligned with worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Even without an abstract, the combination of "breakthrough inventions" and "migrating clusters of innovation" makes it very likely to be relevant to how knowledge and inventive capability travel through labor movement and related frictions. No abstract available.	William R. Kerr
9	2014	An Empirical Analysis of Non-Competition Clauses and Other Restrictive Post-Employment Covenants ↗ [Title only] This paper is very likely central to the project because it directly studies non-competition clauses and restrictive post-employment covenants, which are key labor market frictions affecting worker mobility and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. An empirical analysis of these constraints should be highly relevant for understanding how mobility restrictions shape technology transfer, firm behavior, and innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	Randall S. Thomas, Norman Bishara, Kenneth J. Martin
9	2016	Migration, Knowledge Diffusion and the Comparative Advantage of Nations ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies migration as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion across countries, which is central to your project’s focus on worker mobility and technology transfer. Its emphasis on skilled immigrants driving the emergence of new export products also speaks to the quality and direction of diffusion, making it especially pertinent to the role of skilled labor in productivity and innovation. Do migrants shape the dynamic comparative advantage of their sending and receiving countries? To answer this question we study the drivers of knowledge diffusion by looking at the dynamics of the export basket of countries, with particular focus on migration. The fact that knowledge diffusion requires direct human interaction implies that the international diffusion of knowledge should follow the pattern of international migration. This is what this paper documents. Our main finding is that migration, and particularly skilled immigration, is a strong and robust driver of productive knowledge diffusion as measured by the appearance and growth of tradable goods in the migrants' receiving and...	Dany Bahar, Hillel Rapoport
9	2011	Fifty Ways to Leave Your Employer: Relative Enforcement of Covenants Not to Compete, Trends, and Implications for Employee Mobility Policy ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies covenants not to compete, a central labor-market friction that affects worker mobility and therefore knowledge diffusion across firms. The focus on enforcement, trends, and mobility policy strongly matches the project’s interests in how restrictions on employee movement shape innovation, diffusion, and aggregate outcomes. No abstract available.	Norman Bishara
9	2018	Knowing Me, Knowing You: Inventor Mobility and the Formation of Technology-oriented Alliances ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility as a channel for transferring technological knowledge across firms and its impact on subsequent collaboration. Its evidence on how mobile scientists shape alliance formation, especially in R&D and technology development contexts, speaks closely to worker mobility, knowledge diffusion, and firm-level innovation dynamics. We link the hiring of research and development scientists from industry competitors to the subsequent formation of collaborative agreements, namely technology-oriented alliances. By transferring technological knowledge as well as cognitive elements to the hiring firm, mobile inventors foster the alignment of decision frames applied by potential alliance partners in the process of alliance formation, thereby making collaboration more likely. Using data on inventor mobility and alliance formation among 42 global pharmaceutical firms over 16 years, we show that inventor mobility is positively associated with the likelihood of alliance formation in periods following inventor movements. This...	Stefan Wagner, Martin C. Goossen
9	2020	Measuring the Spillovers of Venture Capital ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies knowledge diffusion across firms through venture capital-backed start-ups and explicitly links spillovers to inventor mobility. Its findings on higher-quality, more novel patents and the amplification of spillovers by mobile inventors speak directly to the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for technology transfer and innovation. Abstract This paper shows that venture capital investment in start-ups increases innovation of established companies in technologically related fields due to knowledge spillovers. To address endogeneity issues, we instrument R&D expenditures of established companies with state-level R&D tax credits (Bloom, Schankerman, & Van Reenen, 2013) and venture capital investment with past fundraising of private equity buyout funds (Nanda & Rhodes-Kropf, 2013). Exploring the mechanism, we show that the patents of VC-financed start-ups are on average of higher quality, more novel, and less protected by intellectual property rights than those of established firms, leading to significantly larger...	Monika Schnitzer, Martin Watzinger
9	2023	Tax Planning Knowledge Diffusion via the Labor Market ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how worker movement through the labor market diffuses knowledge across firms, which is central to the project’s focus on mobility-driven knowledge spillovers. Although the setting is tax-planning rather than technology or invention, it provides strong evidence on how employee hiring transmits firm-specific human capital and how knowledge transfer depends on worker seniority and firm similarity. We examine the extent to which the labor market facilitates the diffusion of tax-planning knowledge across firms. Using a novel data set of tax department employee movements between S&P 1500 firms, we find that firms experience an increase in their tax planning after hiring a tax employee from a tax-aggressive firm. This finding is robust to various research designs and specifications. Consistent with tax-planning knowledge driving the result, we find that the tax-planning benefits are more substantial when the employee is involved in a director-level role and has more experience. Further tests suggest that tax-planning knowledge is highly specific in nature: the increase in tax avoidance...	John Manuel Barrios, John Gallemore
9	2021	Employee Non-compete Agreements, Gender, and Entrepreneurship ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies employee non-compete agreements as a labor market friction that restricts worker mobility and shapes entrepreneurship. It also speaks to knowledge diffusion and firm dynamics by showing how non-competes reduce the ability of founders—especially women—to leverage prior experience and hire talent with relevant expertise for higher-potential startups. I contribute to the literature on institutions, gender, and entrepreneurship by showing that macrolevel institutional policies that do not explicitly target women nonetheless discourage them from leveraging prior professional experience—their own and that of others—in founding new ventures. Most ventures fail, but chances of success are greater if founders can bring to bear their professional expertise. However, employee non-compete agreements enjoin workers from leaving their employer to found a rival business in the same industry. Thus, non-competes add legal risk to business risk. To the extent that women exhibit greater risk aversion, the threat of litigation from their ex-employer may...	Matt Marx
9	2013	Researchers’ Mobility and its Impact on Scientific Productivity ↗ [Title only] This title is highly aligned with the project because it directly studies mobility as a mechanism affecting productivity, likely through the transfer of knowledge and human capital across organizations. Even without an abstract, the focus on researchers’ mobility makes it very relevant to worker movement, spillovers, and the productivity consequences of mobility frictions and policies. No abstract available.	Ana Fernandez-Zubieta, Aldo Geuna, Cornelia Lawson
9	2017	Structural dynamics of regional innovation patterns in Europe: the role of inventors’ mobility ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how inventors’ mobility and high-skilled technician inflows affect regional innovation capacity and the structure of innovation, which is central to knowledge diffusion through worker movement. Its focus on cross-region inventor flows and dynamic changes in innovation patterns directly matches the project’s interest in labor mobility as a mechanism for technology transfer and growth. The role of inventors’ mobility on the innovative capacity of the host region has largely been highlighted, measured and empirically proved. In this work, the perspective is a rather different one. The paper assesses the role that the flow of inventors and high-skilled technicians has on the region's capacity to modify its structural mode of innovation. By applying the regional patterns of innovation framework in a dynamic perspective, it is shown that inventors’ inflows across space produce structural dynamics in the mode regions innovate.	Roberta Capello, Camilla Lenzi
9	2019	What Happened to U.S. Business Dynamism? ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies the decline in knowledge diffusion across firms, which is central to understanding how technology and ideas spread through the economy. Its focus on firm dynamics, innovation, and the frontier-to-laggard transmission of knowledge aligns closely with the project’s interest in diffusion mechanisms and the aggregate effects of frictions on productivity and growth. We attempt to understand potential common forces behind rising market concentration and a slowdown in business dynamism in the US economy, through a micro-founded general equilibrium model of endogenous firm dynamics. The model captures the strategic behavior between competing firms, its effect on their innovation decisions, and the resulting “best-versus-the-rest” dynamics. We consider multiple potential mechanisms that can drive the observed changes and use the calibrated model to assess their relative importance, with particular attention to the implied transitional dynamics. Our results highlight the dominant role of a decline in the intensity of knowledge diffusion from frontier firms...	Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates
9	2014	Venture Capital and the Diffusion of Knowledge ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly links venture capital with knowledge diffusion, a central mechanism in how ideas and technologies spread across firms and startups. It likely speaks to innovation networks, spillovers, and the movement of knowledge through entrepreneurial financing, though it may be broader than worker-mobility-specific frictions such as non-competes or search frictions. No abstract available.	Juanita González-Uribe
9	2010	Recruiting for Ideas: How Firms Exploit the Prior Inventions of New Hires ↗ [Title only] This title is highly aligned with the project because it directly studies how firms use the prior inventions of new hires, which is a clear worker-mobility channel for transferring knowledge and technology across firms. It likely speaks to inventor mobility, hiring strategies, and knowledge diffusion, though the exact focus on frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity is uncertain without the abstract. No abstract available.	Jasjit Singh, Ajay Agrawal
9	2015	Educational diversity and knowledge transfers via inter-firm labor mobility ↗ This paper is directly about knowledge transfer through inter-firm labor mobility, which is central to the project’s focus on how workers carry ideas and technology between firms. Its emphasis on productivity effects, worker flows, and the knowledge-transfer channel makes it highly relevant for understanding diffusion mechanisms, even though it does not specifically focus on non-competes or inventor mobility. This article contributes to the literature on knowledge transfer via labor mobility by providing new evidence regarding the role of educational diversity in knowledge transfer. In tracing worker flows between firms in Denmark over the period 1995–2005, we find that knowledge carried by workers who have been previously exposed to educationally diverse workforces significantly increases the productivity of the hiring firms. Several extensions of our baseline specification support this finding and confirm that our variable of interest affects the arrival firm's performance mainly through the knowledge transfer channel.	Marianna Marino, Pierpaolo Parrotta, Dario Pozzoli
9	2014	The distribution of the gains from spillovers through worker mobility between workers and firms ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies knowledge spillovers through worker mobility, which is one of the project’s central mechanisms for technology diffusion across firms. It also speaks to how gains from mobility are split between firms and workers, informing the incentives for hiring, retention, and compensation in the presence of labor-market frictions. Knowledge spillovers through worker mobility between firms, found in previous research, imply that knowledge production within firms creates a positive externality to the hiring firms and their workers. We calculate the shares in the gains from spillovers retained by these parties using matched employer-employee data from Danish manufacturing. We find that around two-thirds of the total output gain (0.1% per year) is netted by the firms as extra profit, about a quarter goes to the incumbent workers as extra wages, while the workers who bring spillovers receive no more than 8% of it. This gains distribution, which favors the hiring firms, is similar for different types of moving workers, and...	Andrey Stoyanov, Nick Zubanov
9	2014	Mobility, retention and productivity of genomics scientists in the United States ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies mobility and retention of scientists, which likely connects to how worker movement affects knowledge diffusion and productivity. The focus on genomics scientists in the United States also suggests implications for innovative labor markets, research spillovers, and firm or institutional productivity. No abstract available.	Kenneth Guang-Lih Huang, Gökhan Ertug
9	2021	Subjective Beliefs about Contract Enforceability ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies non-compete enforceability, a central labor-market friction that directly shapes worker mobility and therefore the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Its evidence on mistaken beliefs and information shocks also speaks to how legal institutions affect job switching, retention, and the broader transmission of skills and ideas. This paper assesses the content, role, and adaptability of subjective beliefs about contract enforceability in the context of postemployment covenants not to compete. We show that— while noncompete enforceability varies widely across states—employees of all stripes tend to believe that their noncompetes are enforceable, even when they are not. We provide evidence in support of both supplyand demand-side stories that explain employees’ persistently inaccurate beliefs. Moreover, we show that mistaken beliefs are not innocuous. Rather, believing that unenforceable noncompetes are enforceable causes employees to forgo better job options and to perceive that their employer is more likely to take...	J.J. Prescott, Evan Starr
9	2015	Dynastic entrepreneurship, entry, and non-compete enforcement ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies non-compete enforcement and its effects on employee spinoffs, firm entry, and social welfare—central mechanisms in labor mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also speaks to how financing constraints and bargaining power shape whether worker movement generates innovation and entrepreneurial spillovers or is suppressed by mobility frictions. We investigate entry in a dynastic entrepreneurship (overlapping generations) environment created by employee spinoffs. Without finance constraints, enforcement of non-compete agreements unambiguously improves social welfare outcomes, and even increases the rate of spinoffs from original firms. Indeed, if employers have all the bargaining power vis-a-vis their employees, optimal entry of original firms and all subsequent employee spinoffs is achieved, despite the fact that the original firm can only negotiate with the first spinoff. However, if employees are unable to buy out their non-compete contracts, enforcement of these agreements shuts down socially profitable spinoff firms...	James E. Rauch
9	2010	Prolific Inventors: Who are They and Where do They Locate? Evidence from a Five Countries US Patenting Data Set ↗ [Title only] This paper looks highly relevant because it focuses on inventors, their prolificity, and their location choices, which are central to understanding how skilled-worker mobility shapes knowledge diffusion and innovation. Even without the abstract, the emphasis on where inventors locate across countries suggests it likely bears directly on geographic clustering, inventor mobility, and cross-firm or cross-region technology transfer. No abstract available.	Christian Le Bas, Riad Bouklia-Hassane, Alexandre Cabagnols
9	2023	Where Have All the "Creative Talents" Gone? Employment Dynamics of US Inventors ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility, hiring by incumbent firms, and the consequences for innovative output, which are central to knowledge diffusion through labor markets. Its model and evidence on how incumbent hiring can alter whether ideas are implemented speak directly to firm-level retention, compensation, and the allocation of creative talent across firms. How are inventors allocated in the US economy and does that allocation affect innovative capacity? To answer these questions, we first build a model where an inventor with a new idea has the possibility to work for an entrant or incumbent firm. Strategic considerations encourage the incumbent to hire the inventor, offering higher wages, and then not implement her idea. We then combine data on 760 thousand U.S. inventors with the LEHD data. We find that when an inventor is hired by an incumbent, their earnings increases by 12.6 percent and their innovative output declines by 6 to 11 percent.	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
9	2024	The effect of labor mobility on corporate investment and performance over the business cycle ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies labor mobility frictions via non-compete enforcement and their effects on firm investment, hiring of skilled workers, and performance. It speaks to the project’s core themes of how worker movement shapes firm growth and how restrictions on mobility affect broader productivity and innovation outcomes, especially through the recruitment of experienced workers. We show that time-series variation in investment opportunities and labor demand create heterogeneity in the effects of labor mobility on corporate investment over the business cycle. To isolate variation in labor mobility, we create an annual state-level index from 1984 through 2017 that captures the degree to which state courts enforce covenants not to compete. We find that firms located in more mobile labor markets increase investment rates more during economic expansions but have similar investment rates during periods of low or negative growth. This increased investment during expansions is greater for firms that rely more on recruiting skilled and experienced workers to grow their...	John Bai, Ashleigh Eldemire, Matthew Serfling
9	2023	The diffusion of recruit knowledge and core technological change in organizations ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies learning-by-hiring as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion within firms, directly linking recruit mobility to technological change and incumbent learning. Its focus on experienced scientists, patent data, and how hiring shapes core innovation closely matches the project’s themes of inventor mobility, human capital transfer, and diffusion of technology across firms. Purpose This study aims to develop a model of learning-by-hiring in which knowledge gains may occur at the time of recruitment but also after recruitment when other incumbent organizational members assimilate a recruit’s knowledge. The author’s model predicts that experienced recruits are more likely to catalyze change to their organization’s core technological capabilities. Design/methodology/approach The continuous-time parametric hazard rate regressions predict core technological change in a long panel (1970–2017) of US biotechnology industry patent data. The author uses over 140,000 patents to model the evolution of knowledge of over 52,000 scientists and over 4,450 firms. To address...	Amit Jain
9	2019	Bar Talk: Informal Social Interactions, Alcohol Prohibition, and Invention ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how disruptions to informal social networks affect invention and patenting, directly speaking to the mechanisms through which knowledge diffuses among inventors. It also shows that social and formal connections are complements in the invention process and that network changes alter both the rate and direction of inventive activity, which aligns closely with the project’s focus on knowledge diffusion and innovation. To understand the importance of informal social networks for invention, I examine one of the largest involuntary disruptions of social networks in U.S. history: alcohol prohibition. The enactment of state-level prohibition laws differentially treated counties depending on whether those counties were wet or dry prior to prohibition. After the imposition of state-level prohibition, previously wet counties had 8-18% fewer patents per year relative to consistently dry counties. The effect was largest in the first three years after the imposition of prohibition and rebounds thereafter. The effect was smaller for groups that were less likely to frequent saloons, namely women and particular ethnic...	Michael Andrews
9	2008	Spinoffs and the Market for Ideas ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a focus on how new firms created by former employees transmit ideas and knowledge across organizations, which is central to worker mobility and technology diffusion. It likely speaks directly to spinouts/spinoffs as a mechanism of innovation, firm formation, and spillovers, making it highly relevant to the project. No abstract available.	Satyajit Chatterjee, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg
9	2009	Tracing the effect of links between science and industry: The role of researcher interaction and mobility between firms and research organizations [Title only] This title is highly aligned with the project because it explicitly studies researcher interaction and mobility between firms and research organizations, which are central channels for knowledge diffusion. The focus on links between science and industry also suggests direct relevance to technology transfer, spillovers, and the role of worker mobility in spreading innovation. No abstract available.	Bruno Cassiman, Reinhilde Veugelers, Sam Arts
9	2007	Spin-Offs and the Market for Ideas ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because spin-offs are a classic channel through which employees carry knowledge, ideas, and routines from incumbent firms to new ventures, directly linking worker mobility to knowledge diffusion. The phrase "market for ideas" also suggests mechanisms of idea transfer, entrepreneurial recombination, and potentially spillovers across firms, all central to the project’s themes. No abstract available.	Satyajit Chatterjee, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg
9	2023	Beyond Trade Secrecy: Confidentiality Agreements That Act Like Noncompetes ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns contractual restrictions on worker mobility, with confidentiality agreements functioning similarly to noncompete clauses. It likely speaks to how labor-market frictions limit knowledge diffusion, especially if it analyzes effects on inventors, skilled workers, or firm-level innovation. No abstract available.	Camilla Alexandra Hrdy, Christopher B. Seaman
9	2018	Restrictions on CEO Mobility, Performance-Turnover Sensitivity, and Compensation: Evidence from Non-compete Agreements ↗ [Title only] This paper is highly relevant because it studies mobility restrictions through non-compete agreements and how they affect CEO turnover, compensation, and performance incentives, which directly relates to labor market frictions and worker movement. Although it focuses on CEOs rather than inventors or broader worker diffusion, the mechanisms are central to understanding how mobility constraints shape firm behavior and knowledge transfer. No abstract available.	Omesh Kini, Ryan Williams, Sirui Yin
9	2018	Does Trade Secrets Protection Affect Human Capital Investment? Evidence From the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine ↗ [Title only] This paper is highly relevant because it studies trade secrets protection and the inevitable disclosure doctrine, both of which directly affect worker mobility and the legal constraints on moving human capital across firms. Its focus on how these protections influence human capital investment also connects to firm incentives, knowledge diffusion, and the broader productivity effects of labor market frictions. No abstract available.	Zhangfan Cao, Steven Xianglong Chen
9	2011	Value of Invention, Prolific Inventor Productivity and Mobility: Evidence from Five Countries, 1975-2002 ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility across firms and its relationship to productivity and invention value, which are central mechanisms in knowledge diffusion. Its findings on inter-firm mobility and cross-field movement speak directly to how worker movement affects technology transfer and the quality of innovation. The aim of this paper is to provide new insights into (1) the determinants of the value of inventions and (2) the role that mobility plays in the behavior of prolific inventors, whom we identify based on the number of patents exceeding a threshold of productivity. We examine mobility in two dimensions: from firm to firm (inter-firm) and from one technical field to another. We exploit data on patents filed by inventors from five countries (France, uk, Germany, us and Japan) in the USPTO during the period from 1975 to 2002. From our regressions, we show that: (1) as predicted by evolutionary theory, inventor productivity is a positive determinant of invention value, (2) inter-firm mobility is...	William R. Latham, Christian Le Bas, Dmitry Volodin
9	2023	Technology acquisition following inventor exit in the biopharmaceutical industry ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for transferring technological knowledge across firms and how that mobility shapes acquisition outcomes. It also speaks to the project’s policy focus by highlighting how non-compete clauses may impede inventor exit, reduce information asymmetry, and thereby alter the pace and direction of technology diffusion. In technological acquisitions, a “focal” firm aiming to appropriate the technological knowledge of another “alter” firm faces information asymmetries in imperfect strategic factor markets. Little is known about whether the mobility of people between the firms may reduce this information asymmetry and contribute to an increased likelihood of an acquisition. To investigate this question, we argue that for an actively acquiring firm, inventor-exit to an alter firm increases the likelihood of acquisition because it helps identify an acquisition target. In addition, since an acquiring firm is more likely to have information about a potential target with more technological capital, inventor-exit...	Mayank Varshney, Amit Jain
9	2017	Bankruptcy, Team-Specific Human Capital, and Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Inventors ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly links inventors, team-specific human capital, and innovation, which fits the project’s focus on how worker movement and human capital transfer affect knowledge diffusion. Bankruptcy likely serves as a mobility or separation shock that can reveal how inventor movement and firm failure shape innovation outcomes and spillovers. No abstract available.	Ramin Baghai, Rui Silva, Luofu Ye
9	2008	The Influence of Technological Interdependence on Employee Entrepreneurship and Mobility: Evidence from the Semiconductor Industry ↗ [Title only] This title appears highly relevant because it directly studies employee entrepreneurship and mobility in the semiconductor industry, which is a classic setting for knowledge spillovers and inventor labor movement across firms. The focus on technological interdependence suggests it likely examines how related technologies shape mobility and startup formation, making it very close to the project’s themes of worker-driven diffusion and innovation. No abstract available.	Martin Ganco
9	2014	Mobilność kapitału ludzkiego jako źródło międzynarodowej i wewnątrzkrajowej dyfuzji wiedzy ↗ The paper is directly about human capital mobility as a source of both domestic and international knowledge diffusion, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a mechanism for technology spillovers. It also explicitly frames the issue in terms of innovation, competitiveness, and spillover benefits versus source-side losses, closely matching the project’s concerns about aggregate productivity and the effects of mobility on knowledge transfer. Streszczenie: Panuje przekonanie, e mobilno kapitau ludzkiego jest kluczowa zarwno dla wewntrzkrajowego, jak i midzynarodowego rozprzestrzeniania si wiedzy, a w konsekwencji poprawy innowacyjnoci i konkurencyjnoci przedsibiorstw i gospodarek narodowych. W powszechnym odczuciu jednake to tylko strona otrzymujca odnosi korzyci w postaci efektw spillover, podczas gdy przedsibiorstwo czy kraj rdowy pracownika trac (lub nie zyskuj	Małgorzata Wachowska
9	2019	The nexus between inventors’ mobility and regional growth across European regions ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventors’ mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion and its effects on regional innovation and growth. It also speaks to how the recipient region’s knowledge base conditions the impact of mobile inventors, which is central to understanding when worker movement translates into stronger technology spillovers and productivity gains. The role of the spatial mobility of skilled individuals and knowledge workers on the innovative capacity of the recipient region has largely been highlighted, measured and proved in the literature, by positing a direct link from mobility to innovation. This paper enters this literature by explicitly examining and verifying whether innovation generated by inventors’ mobility is enough to enhance growth and whether such link depends on the innovative context. In fact, areas in which inventors can more easily enter, integrate and complement existing consolidated knowledge bases can be more easily affected by incoming inventors.	Roberta Capello, Camilla Lenzi
9	2021	Did Western CEO Incentives Contribute to China’s Technological Rise? ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies technology transfer through firm relationships and the loss of R&D human capital to China, which aligns with the project’s focus on worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. It also connects firm compensation incentives to the direction and quality of knowledge spillovers, innovation outcomes, and the long-run consequences of technology diffusion for productivity and competition. We study the role of Western CEO incentives in fostering the technological rise of China. Due to China’s quid pro quo policy, foreign multinationals face a trade-off between the short-term benefits of accessing China’s vast market and the long-term costs of transferring technology to China. Leveraging microdata on the global patent network, we construct multiple measures to describe technological interactions between US firms and over 70 countries. We find that firms managed by CEOs with highpowered incentive contracts form more partnerships with China and transfer more technology to China. These firms subsequently lose R&D human capital to China and face more patenting competition from...	Bo Bian, Jean‐Marie Meier
9	2015	Corporate Social Responsibility and the Prevention of Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from Inevitable Disclosure Doctrines ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies knowledge spillovers and a legal mechanism (inevitable disclosure doctrines) that likely restricts worker mobility and the transfer of firm-specific knowledge. The CSR angle suggests an additional firm-level strategic response, but the central focus on preventing spillovers makes it very closely aligned with labor mobility, diffusion frictions, and knowledge transfer. No abstract available.	Caroline Flammer, Aleksandra Kacperczyk
9	2023	Economics at the FTC: Spatial Demand, Veterinary Hospital Mergers, Rulemaking, and Noncompete Agreements ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it explicitly discusses the economic analysis behind a proposed FTC rule banning non-compete clauses, which are a central labor-market friction in the project. It also frames competition policy and merger analysis in ways that connect to firm behavior, worker mobility, and the broader institutions shaping knowledge diffusion. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission enforces federal competition and consumer protection laws that prevent anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices, and works to advance government policies that protect consumers and promote competition. The FTC’s Bureau of Economics performs economic analysis to support both the enforcement and policy activities of the Commission. This article discusses several examples of these activities. We first discuss some work our economists have done on spatial considerations in demand estimation, and then present an analytical approach that has been developed to assess consumer choice between service providers with the use of data on geographic...	Abigail Ferguson, Nellie Lew, Michael Lipsitz, et al.
9	2018	Restrictions on CEO Mobility, Performance-Turnover Sensitivity, and Compensation: Evidence from Non-Compete Agreements ↗ [Title only] This paper is highly likely to be directly relevant because it studies restrictions on CEO mobility through non-compete agreements, a central labor-market friction in the project. Its focus on performance-turnover sensitivity and compensation also speaks to how mobility constraints affect firm incentives, retention, and the allocation of high-value managerial human capital. No abstract available.	Omesh Kini, Ryan Williams, Sirui Yin
9	2012	The Role of Public Researcher Mobility for Industrial Innovation ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how mobility of university scientists and R&D workers transmits scientific knowledge into firms’ innovative activity. It speaks to the project’s core mechanisms of worker mobility, knowledge diffusion, and firm-level innovation effects, though it focuses more on public researchers and absorptive capacity than on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility policy. Scientific knowledge is an important ingredient in the innovation process. Drawing on the literature on the relationship between science and technology, organizational learning theory, and the absorptive capacity perspective, this paper scrutinizes the importance of mobility of university scientists for firms’ innovative activities. Combining patent data and matched employer-employee data for Danish firms, we are able to detect nearly all labor mobility of R&D workers for an entire economy, 1999 to 2004. We find that firm joiners contribute more to innovative activity than stayers. We also observe that newly hired university researchers give a stronger contribution to innovative activity...	Ann‐Kathrine Ejsing, Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, et al.
9	2017	Cross-Organization Collaboration and Mobility of Knowledge Workers ↗ [Title only] This title is highly aligned with the project because it explicitly centers on cross-organization collaboration and the mobility of knowledge workers, which are direct channels for technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers. It is likely to speak to how worker movement and inter-firm interactions transfer skills and ideas, though the exact emphasis on frictions, policy, or aggregate productivity is uncertain from the title alone. No abstract available.	Benjamin A. Campbell, Francesco Di Lorenzo, Valentina Tartari
9	2020	Anti-competitive and regulatory barriers in the United States labour market ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies non-compete agreements and occupational licensing as labor market frictions that reduce job mobility, earnings, and productivity growth. It also speaks to policy reforms that could facilitate worker movement and thereby affect the diffusion of skills and knowledge across firms. Occupational licensing and non-competition agreements are two important types of labour market regulation in the United States, both covering around one fifth of all workers. While some regulation is needed to protect safety and ensure quality of services, it also creates entry barriers and reduces competition with important costs for job mobility, earnings and productivity growth. Employment opportunities for low-skilled workers and disadvantaged groups tend to be particularly affected by these barriers. The States are mainly responsible for labour market regulation and the variation across States is similar to the variation in the European Union. Harmonising requirements and scaling back...	Mikkel Hermansen
9	2024	Steering Labor Mobility Through Innovation ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a focus on how labor mobility is shaped by innovation incentives or policies, which is central to the project’s interest in worker movement as a conduit for knowledge diffusion. It likely speaks directly to the interaction between firm innovation, mobility frictions, and the allocation of skilled workers across firms, although the exact mechanism is uncertain without an abstract. No abstract available.	Song Ma, Wenyu Wang, Yufeng Wu
9	2006	Knowledge Transfer Trough Job Mobility: Evidence from a Survey of Italian Inventors This paper is directly about knowledge transfer through worker mobility, focusing on inventors as a key channel of technology and innovation diffusion. Its evidence from Italian pharmaceutical inventors and discussion of mobility measurement issues are highly relevant to the project’s core themes of skilled-worker movement, spillovers, and knowledge diffusion. Knowledge transfer issues are of great interest in researchers and policy makers agenda because of its implications in terms of innovation diffusion and economic welfare. Among the others, workers’ mobility, namely highly skilled ones, is considered as one of the most influential channels for knowledge transmission. This paper examines the patterns of mobility of a group of Italian inventors in the pharmaceutical sector. New empirical evidence is discussed and results of the analysis support the idea that workers’ mobility is an important mechanism of valuable knowledge diffusion. Moreover, the paper critically discusses methodological issues concerning measures of inventors’ mobility...	Camilla Lenzi
9	2025	Locking in Talent through Disclosure: Labor Market Competition and Corporate Patent Transparency ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly links labor market competition with a firm's disclosure of patent information, which could plausibly affect worker mobility, retention, and knowledge diffusion. The focus on “locking in talent” suggests mechanisms related to innovation spillovers, firm strategies to reduce poaching, and the interaction between patent transparency and labor market frictions. No abstract available.	Yu Hou, Miao Liu, Jiaping Qiu, et al.
9	2025	Big Shoes to Fill: How Star Search Behavior and Network Structure Influence Coinventor Mobility and Innovation Performance upon Star Exit ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility, coinventor spillovers, and how the exit of star scientists affects knowledge diffusion through worker movement and collaboration networks. It also speaks to how network structure and search behavior shape the tradeoff between human capital transfer and relational capital loss, which is central to understanding frictions and firm-level innovation outcomes in your project. A robust body of literature examines how star inventors influence their firms’ innovation trajectories, but how their departure affects firm innovation outcomes is imprecisely understood. Star departure has two kinds of spillover effects on firms: increased coinventor mobility and reduced coinventor performance. In this study, we aim to understand whether and why these spillover effects may systematically differ between stars. We argue that star search behavior influences the nature of embeddedness—positional and structural—in the star-coinventor network, which in turn differentially affects the two spillover effects arising from star exit. We test our hypotheses using patent data from 1985...	Kiran Awate, Rajat Khanna, Kannan Srikanth
9	2011	Mobility, Productivity and Patent Value for Asian Prolific Inventors : China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility and its effects on inventor productivity and patent value, which are central mechanisms in the project’s focus on knowledge diffusion through worker movement. Its cross-country comparison and emphasis on prolific inventors provide useful evidence on how mobility shapes innovation outcomes across different labor market contexts. We provide new insights into the role of individual inventors in innovation. We focus our analysis on prolific inventors in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. We analyse patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to thousands of inventors from those countries between 1975 and 2010 to investigate the role that mobility plays in the behaviour of prolific inventors. We hypothesize that mobility affects: (1) the productivity of prolific inventors and, (2) the value of their inventions. We compare findings for each of the countries with those for inventors in North America, Western Europe and Australia & New Zealand.	William R. Latham, Christian Le Bas, Dmitry Volodin
9	2022	Don't Abolish Employee Noncompete Agreements ↗ [Title only] This paper is almost certainly directly relevant because employee noncompete agreements are a central labor-market friction affecting worker mobility, knowledge diffusion, and the movement of skilled workers across firms. The title suggests it takes a policy stance on restricting versus facilitating mobility, which is closely tied to innovation, spillovers, and aggregate productivity in the research project. No abstract available.	Alan J. Meese
9	2024	The Diffusion of New Technologies ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how new technologies diffuse through hiring across firms and locations, which is central to understanding labor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge and technology diffusion. Its findings on slow geographic spread, skill-biased early adoption, and persistent concentration of high-skill jobs directly speak to how worker movement and labor market frictions shape the rate and direction of diffusion. We identify phrases associated with novel technologies using textual analysis of patents, job postings, and earnings calls, enabling us to identify four stylized facts on the diffusion of jobs relating to new technologies. First, the development of economically impactful new technologies is geographically highly concentrated, more so even than overall patenting: 56% of the most economically impactful technologies come from just two U.S. locations, Silicon Valley and the Northeast Corridor. Second, as the technologies mature and the number of related jobs grows, hiring spreads geographically. But this process is very slow, taking around 50 years to disperse fully. Third, while initial hiring...	Aakash Kalyani, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Nicholas Bloom, et al.
9	2023	Non-Ethnic Inventor Sourcing of Immigrant Knowledge: The Role of Social Communities ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how immigrant inventor mobility and proximity facilitate knowledge flows across inventors and firms, which is central to worker-driven technology diffusion. Its focus on social communities, patent-based spillovers, and the role of skilled immigrant workers in transmitting knowledge directly aligns with the project’s themes of inventor mobility, knowledge transfer, and innovation spillovers. Immigrant inventors have been important for fostering innovation in their host economies and several studies have examined the role of knowledge flows within ethnic communities. We study the part played by immigrant inventors by exploring the influence of ethnic Indian inventors in the U.S. on their non-Indian peers. We draw on social identity and categorization theories and hypothesize that exposure of non-Indian inventors to Indians in different social communities facilitates knowledge flows across ethnicities. We examine participation in the organizational, technological, and geographic communities. We test our predictions using patent data, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security...	Larissa Rabbiosi, Francesco Di Lorenzo, Anupama Phene, et al.
9	2011	Unraveling the role of public researcher mobility for industrial innovation This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer, focusing on scientists moving from academia to firms and how that affects firm innovation. It also compares mobile workers to immobile workers and other hires, which speaks to how labor flows shape innovation outcomes and the depreciation of embodied knowledge over time. We estimate the relative contribution of mobile scientists who leave academia for the private sector on the subsequent innovative performance of the firms they join. We use data on the population of Danish firms and their R&D workers for the period 1999-2004 and measure innovation performance by the (value-adjusted) number of patent applications at the European Patent Office. We compare the efficacy of mobile former university scientists to the effects of mobile workers hired from other 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...	Ann‐Kathrine Ejsing, Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted
9	2014	Learning on the Job? Employee Mobility in the Asset Management Industry ↗ [Title only] The title directly points to employee mobility and learning effects within a knowledge-intensive industry, which is highly aligned with worker movement as a channel for transferring expertise and know-how. Asset management is also a setting where human capital, reputation, and performance-sensitive knowledge can plausibly diffuse across firms through hiring and job switching, making this very relevant to the project. No abstract available.	Aaron Chatterji, Rui de Figueiredo, Evan Rawley
9	2025	Changing the perception of time: railroads, inventor access and innovation in 19th-century France ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how lower mobility costs from railroads increase inventor access, knowledge diffusion, and patenting across regions. Its focus on inventor movement, spatial spillovers, and the special role of Paris in shaping innovation patterns closely matches the project’s interest in worker mobility as a mechanism for technology diffusion and growth. ABSTRACT I exploit an episode in French history to study the relationship between the rollout of railroads and the rise of the innovation activity in French regions, proxied by the number of patents registered in the French historical database. I employ an inventor access mechanism to show that, by reducing the cost of moving between regions, railways intensified the influence exerted by neighbouring concentrations of inventors, thereby triggering the spread of knowledge and subsequent patenting. I find that inventor access significantly boosts patenting activity, particularly in agriculture and in medium-sized cities. Finally, I study the role of a global city, such as Paris, on the...	Georgios Tsiachtsiras
9	2026	Do Non-Compete Agreements Help or Hurt Workers? Evidence from the Nlsy97 ↗ [Title only] This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies non-compete agreements, one of the central labor market frictions in the project, and their effects on workers. Using NLSY97 evidence suggests it may shed light on mobility, wage dynamics, and possibly knowledge diffusion through worker movement. No abstract available.	Bhargav Gopal, Xiangru Li, Luke Rawling
9	2015	The Network Picture of Labor Flow ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a study of labor flows using network structure, which is highly relevant to worker mobility and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Even without an abstract, it likely speaks directly to how connections between workers, firms, and occupations shape labor movement and potentially spillover of skills or technology. No abstract available.	Eduardo Lopez, Omar Guerrero, Robert L. Axtell
9	2023	Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to “Good’’ Firms? ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of worker or talent mobility across firms, likely focusing on how high-skill labor reallocates toward firms perceived as “good,” which is directly related to knowledge diffusion through worker movement. The emphasis on corporations, talent flow, and firm sorting makes it highly relevant to questions about labor-market frictions, hiring, and the aggregate effects of mobility on productivity and innovation. No abstract available.	Emanuele Colonnelli, Timothy McQuade, Gabriel Ramos, et al.
9	2006	Tracing Mobile Inventors - The Causality between Inventor Mobility and Inventor Productivity ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism affecting productivity and knowledge use, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses technology and know-how across firms. It also addresses bidirectional causality between mobility and productivity, an important issue for understanding how firm and labor market dynamics shape innovation outcomes. This paper analyzes the causality between inventor productivity and inventor mobility. The results show that the level of education has no influence on inventor productivity. Making use of external sources of knowledge, on the contrary, has a significant effect on productivity.Finally, firm size has a positive impact on productivity. Firm size also influences inventor mobility, although negatively. Whereas existing research implicitly assumes causality to point in one direction, this study ex-ante allows for a simultaneous relationship. To deal with theexpected endogeneity problem, instrumental variables techniques will be employed. Results show that mobile inventors are more than four...	Karin Hoisl
9	2023	Measuring the Characteristics and Employment Dynamics of U.S. Inventors ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly studies U.S. inventors, a core population for research on knowledge diffusion, mobility, and innovation. Even without the abstract, work on inventors’ characteristics and employment dynamics is likely to shed light on how worker movement and firm transitions affect technology transfer and inventive output. No abstract available.	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
9	2024	Inventors' Coworker Networks and Innovation ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a direct link between inventors, workplace social ties, and innovation, which is central to how worker mobility and internal firm networks transmit knowledge. Even without an abstract, coworker networks are likely to matter for spillovers, idea recombination, and the diffusion of tacit knowledge across inventors and firms. No abstract available.	Sabrina Lucia Di Addario, Zhexin Feng, Michel Serafinelli
9	2024	A Study of Firm-Switching of Inventors in Big Tech Using Public Patent Data ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies inventors switching firms, which is central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion across employers. Using patent data and focusing on Big Tech suggests it may shed light on how inventor movement transmits technology, though the title alone does not reveal whether it analyzes frictions, policy, or aggregate innovation effects. No abstract available.	Yidan Sun, Mayank Kejriwal
9	2026	Inventor mobility networks and technological knowledge coupling: the moderating role of dynamic capabilities ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility networks and how inventor inflows and outflows shape firms’ technological knowledge coupling, which is central to understanding worker-driven knowledge diffusion. Its focus on asymmetric mobility effects and the role of firm capabilities in mediating knowledge recombination aligns closely with the project’s themes of inventor mobility, spillovers, and firm-level responses to labor mobility. Purpose Grounded in social network theory, this study aims to investigate how directed inventor mobility networks influence firms’ technological knowledge coupling (TKC) and examines the moderating role of dynamic capabilities. Design/methodology/approach Using panel data from 276 Chinese listed biopharmaceutical firms over the period 2003–2022, this study uses a fixed-effects regression model to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings This study yields three key findings. First, firms’ in-degree centrality in inventor mobility networks enhances both complementary and substitutive technological knowledge coupling. Second, out-degree centrality reduces both types of technological knowledge...	Xiaodong Geng, Huaqi Chai, Lulu Lin
9	2013	Hiring from Rivals and Competitive Behavior ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because hiring from rival firms is directly about worker mobility across firms, which can transmit knowledge, skills, and strategic information. It also suggests a link between labor flows and competitive behavior, making it especially pertinent to research on spillovers, retention, and firm-level responses to mobility. No abstract available.	Thorsten Grohsjean, Pascal Kober, Leon Zucchini
9	2016	Redirect and Retain: Why and How Firms Capitalize on Noncompete Enforceability in Technical and Business Occupations ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly centers on noncompete enforceability and how firms use it to redirect and retain workers in technical and business occupations, which are likely key channels for knowledge transfer and mobility frictions. It should speak directly to how restrictive labor contracts affect worker movement, firm retention strategies, and the diffusion of skills and ideas across firms, though the exact empirical focus is uncertain from the title alone. No abstract available.	Evan Starr, Martin Ganco, Benjamin A. Campbell
9	2022	External Knowledge Sourcing and Employee Mobility Barriers ↗ [Title only] This title is highly aligned with the project because it directly links external knowledge sourcing to employee mobility barriers, which are central to how worker movement affects technology diffusion and spillovers. I would expect the paper to analyze how restrictions on mobility shape firms’ access to outside knowledge and the transmission of ideas across organizations. No abstract available.	Eunkwang Seo, Deepak Somaya
9	2018	Knowledge Spillovers ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly focuses on knowledge spillovers as a mechanism of growth and explicitly highlights inventor mobility as a key channel. Its discussion of geographic localization and social networks also aligns closely with the project’s interest in how worker movement and frictions shape technology diffusion across firms. Knowledge spillovers enable an actor to access knowledge generated by another without full (or perhaps any) compensation. Knowledge spillovers are important because they are central to economic growth. In addition, they are strategically important to knowledge-intensive firms. Recent improvements in measurement have enabled scholars to report three robust empirical findings about knowledge spillovers: (1) they are geographically localized; (2) they are influenced by inventor mobility; and (3) social networks enable them to overcome geographic distance.	Ajay Agrawal
9	2024	Academic Scientist Mobility: From Knowledge Transfer to Organizational Symbiosis between University and Industry ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly centers on academic scientist mobility and knowledge transfer, which are core mechanisms in the diffusion of technology and ideas across organizations. The mention of organizational symbiosis between university and industry also suggests an interest in spillovers, labor mobility frictions, and innovation effects that align closely with the project’s themes. No abstract available.	F. Michel
9	2025	Leaky Mess or Safety Vaults? Team Knowledge Production and Post-Mobility Knowledge Leakage ↗ [Title only] The title directly signals a study of knowledge leakage after worker mobility, which is central to technology diffusion through labor market movements. Its focus on team knowledge production and post-mobility spillovers strongly matches the project’s themes of worker mobility, firm-level knowledge transfer, and the conditions under which moving employees transmit or withhold valuable know-how. No abstract available.	Di Tong, Xiaoyu Zhang
9	2025	Market Demand, Competition for Knowledge Workers, and Impact on Invention: Evidence from Electric Vehicle Technologies ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge reallocation, showing how competition for skilled knowledge workers affects invention and spillovers across firms and technological domains. It also connects demand shocks and policy changes to inventor movement, firm innovation outcomes, and the broader diffusion of technology, which are central themes in your project. Strategy and innovation scholars have long emphasized the positive role of market demand in driving innovation within a technological domain. This study sheds light on an indirect negative spillover effect of market demand on technological progress: whereas increased downstream market demand within a domain generally drives increased technological progress in that domain (i.e., the demand-relevant domain), it may also adversely affect the technological progress of firms in adjacent domains. This occurs because the increased technological progress within the demand-relevant domain, driven by the downstream market demand, can intensify competition for skilled knowledge workers—a critical...	Jino Lu
9	2026	Who exits and who stays in an organization? Core technological knowledge and inventor exit ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for the loss and transfer of core technological knowledge across firms. Its focus on how knowledge characteristics shape exit and subsequent moves to rival or non-rival firms directly speaks to knowledge diffusion, firm-level retention, and innovation spillovers. A firm's inventors are repositories of its core expertise that constitutes its competitive advantage. This knowledge is subject to erosion when an inventor exits the firm. Little is known, however, about what makes an inventor with core knowledge susceptible to exit. We develop a model of exit in which inventor knowledge may be core, unique, and complex, which determines the likelihood of her or his exit from a firm. We study inventor exit from IBM using a long panel of USPTO data (1975–2010) and find that an inventor with core knowledge is more likely to exit from IBM when she or he has more unique and less complex knowledge. These factors also determine whether the inventor subsequently...	Mayank Varshney, Amit Kumar Jain
9	2023	Externalities From Localized Labor Mobility Restrictions: The Role of Social Connections ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies localized labor mobility restrictions, which are central to understanding how limits on worker movement affect knowledge diffusion and spillovers. The emphasis on social connections suggests a mechanism through which mobility frictions shape where workers move and how externalities propagate across firms and locations, closely matching the project’s themes. No abstract available.	Jason Chen, Melissa Crumling, Torin McFarland
9	2025	Unlocking Mobility: Does Banning Non-Compete Agreements Create Shareholder Value? ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies non-compete agreements, a central labor-market friction affecting worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. The shareholder-value framing suggests a firm-level or market-level analysis of the consequences of relaxing mobility constraints, which is closely connected to innovation, hiring, and productivity spillovers. No abstract available.	Liu Ya, Buhui Qiu, Teng Wang
9	2025	Beyond Borders: Social Networks, Labor Flows, and Innovation Spillovers ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly links labor flows and innovation spillovers, which are central to worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. The mention of social networks and borders suggests it likely studies how connections shape cross-firm or cross-region movement and the spread of ideas, though the exact focus on frictions like non-competes or firm behavior is uncertain. No abstract available.	Lin Peng, Linyi Zhang, Qiguang Wang
9	2025	Cultural Segmentation, Human Capital Flow and Technology Transfer ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly links human capital flow to technology transfer, which is central to studying how worker mobility diffuses knowledge across firms and regions. The added emphasis on cultural segmentation suggests an important frictions-and-matching angle that could affect who moves, where knowledge goes, and how effectively it spreads. No abstract available.	Joseph Ma, Qinwen Dai
9	2025	Knowledge Spillovers and Cross-Country Technology Diffusion ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns knowledge spillovers and technology diffusion, which are central to understanding how ideas move across agents and places. Although it does not explicitly mention worker mobility or labor market frictions, cross-country diffusion often overlaps with the mechanisms this project studies, so it is likely a strong match. No abstract available.	Jenna Greene, Matthew Gidden, Elina Brutschin, et al.
9	2025	Knowledge Spillovers and Cross-Country Technology Diffusion ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly points to knowledge spillovers and technology diffusion, both central to how ideas move across firms and economies. Even without mentioning workers explicitly, cross-country diffusion often involves channels like inventor mobility, trade, multinational firms, and labor-market frictions, so it likely speaks to the project’s core mechanisms and aggregate productivity effects. No abstract available.	Jenna Greene, Matthew Gidden, Elina Brutschin, et al.
9	2021	Competition, Firm Innovation, and Growth under Imperfect Technology Spillovers ↗ [Title only] This title is highly aligned with the project because it directly concerns how imperfect technology spillovers shape firm innovation, competition, and growth. Even without explicit mention of worker mobility, it likely speaks to the same broader mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and frictions that determine how technologies spread across firms. No abstract available.	Karam Jo, Seula Kim
9	2023	Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to "Good" Firms? ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of worker sorting and mobility across firms based on perceived quality or social value, which is closely related to how talent flows across employers. It is likely highly relevant to your project because it may analyze firm-level hiring, retention, and the direction of talent reallocation, though it is less certain whether it focuses directly on knowledge diffusion or labor market frictions. No abstract available.	Emanuele Colonnelli, Timothy McQuade, Gabriel Ramos, et al.
9	2025	Shared Stakes, Shared Brains Common Ownership and Inventor Mobility along Supply Chains ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly links inventor mobility to common ownership, suggesting a mechanism through which knowledge and technology may diffuse across firms in supply chains. The focus on supply chains and ownership structure also aligns with broader questions about how firm connections and incentives shape worker movement, spillovers, and innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	Kai Wang, Lihong Wang
9	2018	Knowing me, knowing you: Inventor mobility and the formation of technology-oriented alliances This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility as a channel of technological knowledge transfer across firms and shows how such movement shapes subsequent collaborative agreements. Its focus on rival firms, knowledge spillovers, and the role of mobile scientists in facilitating technology diffusion aligns closely with the project’s core themes, especially inventor mobility and the diffusion of technology through labor market movement. We link the hiring of R&D scientists from industry competitors to the subsequent formation of collaborative agreements, namely technology-oriented alliances. By transferring technological knowledge as well as cognitive elements to the hiring firm, mobile inventors foster the alignment of decision frames applied by potential alliance partners in the process of alliance formation thereby making collaboration more likely. Using data on inventor mobility and alliance formation amongst 42 global pharmaceutical firms over 16 years, we show that inventor mobility is positively associated with the likelihood of alliance formation in periods following inventor movements. This relationship becomes...	Stefan Wagner, Martin C. Goossen
9	2011	Regional Distribution, Mobility and Productivity of French Prolific Inventors This paper is highly relevant because it studies inventor mobility across firms and regions and links that mobility to productivity, which is central to understanding how workers diffuse knowledge and technology. Its focus on inter-firm mobility, geographic mobility, and prolific inventors provides direct evidence on the mechanisms and consequences of labor mobility frictions for innovation. Abstract. In this paper we present empirical evidence about some geographical characteristics of French prolific inventors through an analysis of French patents de-posits at the USPTO over a long time period (1975-2002). We found out that they are highly concentrated in the French space around three regional poles (Ile de France, Rhône-Alpes and PACA) and that inter-firms and geographic (regional) mobility is weak. Our estimates show that more mobile inventors (inter-firms) are more productive after controlling for effects of geomobility (with other control vari-ables). By contrast, the more geomobile inventors are less productive after control-ling for inter-firms ’ mobility effects. It...	Christian Le Bas
9	2023	Where Have All the "Creative Talents" Gone? Employment Dynamics of Us Inventors ↗ This paper is directly relevant because it studies the employment dynamics of U.S. inventors, a central group for understanding how skilled-worker mobility transmits knowledge across firms. Even without an abstract, the title suggests a strong link to inventor mobility, labor market frictions, and the diffusion of technology through worker movement. ,	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
9	2025	Talent Allocation to Startups versus Incumbents: A Cross-Country Experiment for Germany and the United States ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns how talent is allocated between startups and incumbent firms, which is central to worker mobility, matching, and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. A cross-country experiment comparing Germany and the United States also suggests an interest in institutional differences that can shape mobility frictions, firm dynamics, and innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	Patrick Nüß, Ufuk Akcigit, Sabrina Jeworrek, et al.
9	2026	Leaky mess or safety vaults? Team knowledge production and post-mobility knowledge spillover ↗ This paper directly investigates how inventor mobility facilitates knowledge spillovers and how team structures mitigate these transfers, which is central to understanding the mechanisms of technology diffusion. It provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of organizational arrangements in controlling the flow of human capital and associated knowledge across firms. Teams have become the primary unit for organizing knowledge production. While existing research has extensively investigated whether and how teams enhance knowledge production, it has paid scant attention to their role in safeguarding against knowledge spillover following inventor mobility. The literature presents conflicting arguments on this issue. Drawing on team innovation research, we contend that team production generates two types of knowledge: task-specific knowledge and metaknowledge. Task-specific knowledge is economically valuable and is fragmented among co-inventors, so that its risk of post-mobility knowledge spillover is lower when it is produced by larger teams. While...	Di Tong, Xiaoyu Zhang
8	1990	Endogenous Technological Change ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies endogenous technological change, R&D incentives, and the role of human capital in driving growth, which are central to understanding how knowledge is created and diffused. However, it does not directly focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or inventor movement as the transmission mechanism for technology spillovers. Growth in this model is driven by technological change that arises from intentional investment decisions made by profit-maximizing agents. The distinguishing feature of the technology as an input is that it is neither a conventional good nor a public good; it is a nonrival, partially excludable good. Because of the nonconvexity introduced by a nonrival good, price-taking competition cannot be supported. Instead, the equilibrium is one with monopolistic competition. The main conclusions are that the stock of human capital determines the rate of growth, that too little human capital is devoted to research in equilibrium, that integration into world markets will increase growth rates, and that...	Paul Romer
8	1994	Regional advantage: culture and competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly links open labor markets, horizontal communication, and firm-to-firm worker movement to regional technology diffusion and innovation. Its Silicon Valley versus Route 128 comparison is highly relevant to understanding how labor market organization and mobility frictions shape knowledge spillovers and aggregate innovative performance. Compares the organization of regional economies, focusing on Silicon Valley's thriving regional network-based system and Route 128's declining independent firm-based system. The history of California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts' Route 128 as centers of innovation in the electronics indistry is traced since the 1970s to show how their network organization contributed to their ability to adapt to international competition. Both regions faced crises in the 1980s, when the minicomputers produced in Route 128 were replaced by personal computers, and Japanese competitors took over Silicon Valley's market for semiconductor memory. However, while corporations in the Route 128 region operated...
8	1995	International R&D spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies international R&D spillovers and how foreign knowledge raises domestic productivity, which is directly relevant to technology diffusion and economy-wide growth. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions specifically, but it provides important background on the broader mechanisms through which knowledge spreads across firms and countries. A model is presented based on recent theories of economic growth that treat commercially oriented innovation efforts as a major engine of technological progress. We study the extent to which a country's total factor productivity depends not only on domestic R&D capital but also on foreign R&D capital. Our estimates indicate that foreign R&D has beneficial effects on domestic productivity, and that these are stronger the more open an economy is to foreign trade. Moreover, the estimated rates of return on R&D are very high, both in terms of domestic output and international spillovers. © 1995.	David T. Coe, Elhanan Helpman
8	1994	“Sticky Information” and the Locus of Problem Solving: Implications for Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how sticky information shapes the locus of innovation-related problem solving, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion and frictions in the transfer of expertise. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market policies like non-competes, it speaks to how costs of transferring knowledge affect where innovation occurs and how firms organize problem solving. To solve a problem, needed information and problem-solving capabilities must be brought together. Often the information used in technical problem solving is costly to acquire, transfer, and use in a new location—is, in our terms, “sticky.” In this paper we explore the impact of information stickiness on the locus of innovation-related problem solving. We find, first, that when sticky information needed by problem solvers is held at one site only, problem solving will be carried out at that locus, other things being equal. Second, when more than one locus of sticky information is called upon by problem solvers, the locus of problem solving may iterate among these sites as problem solving...	Eric von Hippel
8	1996	Strategic alliances and interfirm knowledge transfer ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge moves across firms and changes firms’ technological capabilities, which is central to the project’s focus on technology diffusion. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor-market frictions, but it provides useful evidence on an important non-labor channel of interfirm knowledge transfer and specialization. Abstract This paper examines interfirm knowledge transfers within strategic alliances. Using a new measure of changes in alliance partners' technological capabilities, based on the citation patterns of their patent portfolios, we analyze changes in the extent to which partner firms' technological resources ‘overlap’ as a result of alliance participation. This measure allows us to test hypotheses from the literature on interfirm knowledge transfer in alliances, with interesting results: we find support for some elements of this ‘received wisdom’—equity arrangements promote greater knowledge transfer, and ‘absorptive capacity’ helps explain the extent of technological capability transfer, at...	David C. Mowery, Joanne E. Oxley, Brian S. Silverman
8	2001	The Patent Paradox Revisited: An Empirical Study of Patenting in the U.S. Semiconductor Industry, 1979-1995 ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge-intensive innovation in semiconductors and how strengthened patent rights altered firms’ incentives, which can shape technology diffusion and competitive dynamics. Its finding that patent reforms induced patent portfolio races and facilitated entry by specialized design firms is relevant to how institutional frictions affect innovation, firm dynamics, and the movement of ideas across firms, though it does not directly focus on worker mobility. We examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation. Recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to R&D. Yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid1980s. We explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 U.S. semiconductor firms during 1979‐1995. The results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of U.S. patent rights spawned ‘‘patent portfolio races’’ among capital-intensive firms, but it also facilitated entry by specialized...	Bronwyn H. Hall, Rosemarie Ham Ziedonis
8	2004	Knowledge Networks as Channels and Conduits: The Effects of Spillovers in the Boston Biotechnology Community ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers in a regional innovation network and explicitly highlights labor market transmission mechanisms as part of how information flows across firms. While it does not focus directly on worker mobility frictions like non-competes or inventor movement, its emphasis on geographic proximity, interorganizational ties, and spillover channels is highly relevant to technology diffusion across firms. We contend that two important, nonrelational, features of formal interorganizational networks—geographic propinquity and organizational form—fundamentally alter the flow of information through a network. Within regional economies, contractual linkages among physically proximate organizations represent relatively transparent channels for information transfer because they are embedded in an ecology rich in informal and labor market transmission mechanisms. Similarly, we argue that the spillovers that result from proprietary alliances are a function of the institutional commitments and practices of members of the network. When the dominant nodes in an innovation network are committed to open...	Jason Owen‐Smith, Walter W. Powell
8	1961	Technical Change and the Rate of Imitation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a new technique spreads from one firm to another, which is central to technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers across firms. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it provides directly relevant evidence on the rate and determinants of imitation, making it useful background for the project. This paper investigates the factors determining how rapidly the use of a new technique spreads from one firm to another. A simple model is presented to help explain differences among innovations in the rate of imitation. Deterministic and stochastic versions of this model are tested against data showing how rapidly firms in four industries came to use twelve important innovations. The empirical results seem quite consistent with both versions of the model.	Edwin Mansfield
8	2003	Overcoming Local Search Through Alliances and Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for interfirm knowledge flows and technology diffusion, which is central to the project. It also examines how alliances and geographic/technological distance shape knowledge transfer, though it focuses more on firm search and patent citations than on labor market frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes. Recent research suggests that, due to organizational and relational constraints, firms are limited contextually—both geographically and technologically—in their search for new knowledge. But distant contexts may offer ideas and insights that can be extremely useful to innovation through knowledge recombination. So how can firms reach beyond their existing contexts in their search for new knowledge? In this paper, we suggest that two mechanisms—alliances and the mobility of inventors—can serve as bridges to distant contexts and, thus, enable firms to overcome the constraints of contextually localized search. Through the analysis of patent citation patterns in the semiconductor industry, we...	Lori Rosenkopf, Paul Almeida
8	2003	Intellectual Human Capital and the Birth of US Biotechnology Enterprises ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how tacit knowledge and localized spillovers drive the commercialization and diffusion of biotechnology across firms and industries. While it does not focus explicitly on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its emphasis on intellectual human capital and knowledge transfer maps well onto the project’s core mechanisms of technology diffusion through people. Abstract The number of American firms actively using biotechnology grew rapidly from nonexistent to over 700 in less than two decades, transforming the nature of the pharmaceutical industry and significantly impacting food processing, brewing, and agriculture, as well as other industries. Here we demonstrate empirically that the commercialization of this technology is essentially intertwined with the development of the underlying science in a way which illustrates the significance in practice of the localized spillovers concept in the agglomeration literature and of the tacit knowledge concept in the information literature.	Lynne G. Zucker, Michael R. Darby, Marilynn B. Brewer
8	1997	Local Geographic Spillovers between University Research and High Technology Innovations ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns geographic spillovers from university research to high-technology innovation, which is closely related to how knowledge diffuses across actors and locations. It does not explicitly mention worker mobility or labor market frictions, so the fit is strong on spillovers and diffusion but somewhat less direct on the specific mechanisms of mobility and non-compete constraints. No abstract available.	Luc Anselin, Attila Varga, Zoltán J. Ács
8	2015	Trade Induced Technical Change? The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, IT and Productivity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how trade-induced competitive pressure affects innovation, technology adoption, and the reallocation of employment toward more technologically advanced firms. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its findings on within-firm technical change and between-firm sorting speak to the broader mechanisms through which knowledge diffusion and productivity growth occur. We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on broad measures of technical change—patenting, IT, and TFP—using new panel data across twelve European countries from 1996 to 2007. In particular, we establish that the absolute volume of innovation increases within the firms most affected by Chinese imports in their output markets. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas following China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Chinese import competition led to increased technical change within firms and reallocated employment between firms towards more technologically advanced firms. These within and between effects were about equal in...	Nicholas Bloom, Mirko Draca, John Van Reenen
8	1992	The Search for R&D Spillovers ↗ [Title only] The title directly signals a focus on R&D spillovers, which is central to how knowledge diffuses across firms and likely ties into broader productivity and innovation effects. It may or may not be specifically about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it still sounds highly relevant to the project’s core theme of technology and knowledge transfer. No abstract available.	Zvi Griliches
8	1996	Knowledge and the firm: Overview ↗ This overview is closely related because it frames knowledge as a source of firm rents and explicitly discusses innovation, diffusion, and knowledge transfer within and across firms, which are central to the project. However, it is a broad conceptual survey rather than a focused analysis of worker mobility, labor market frictions, or policy effects on knowledge diffusion. Abstract The explosion of interest in knowledge and its management reflects the trend towards ‘knowledge work’ and the Information Age, and recognition of knowledge as the principal source of economic rent. The papers in this Special Issue represent an attempt by strategy scholars (and some outside our traditional field) to come to terms with the implications of knowledge for the theory of the firm and its management. They are the product of a convergence of several streams of research which have addressed management implications of knowledge, including the management of technology, the economics of innovation and information, resource‐based theory, and organizational learning. At the...	J.‐C. Spender, Robert M. Grant
8	1992	Technology Diffusion and Organizational Learning: The Case of Business Computing ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through organizational learning, know-how, and skill acquisition, which are central to understanding how knowledge spreads across firms. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but its focus on knowledge barriers, learning processes, and the institutional mechanisms that facilitate adoption makes it highly relevant background for the project. The dominant explanation for the spread of technological innovations emphasizes processes of influence and information flow. Firms which are closely connected to pre-existing users of an innovation learn about it and adopt it early on. Firms at the periphery of communication networks are slower to adopt. This paper develops an alternative model which emphasizes the role of know-how and organizational learning as potential barriers to adoption of innovations. Firms delay in-house adoption of complex technology until they obtain sufficient technical know-how to implement and operate it successfully. In response to knowledge barriers, new institutions come into existence which progressively...	Paul Attewell
8	2002	Patents, Citations, and Innovations: A Window on the Knowledge Economy This book is closely related because it studies patents, citations, and inventor-level data as tools for measuring innovation and tracing knowledge spillovers across locations and firms. Its focus on geographic patterns of spillovers and inventor/employer information makes it useful background for understanding how knowledge diffuses, though it does not directly center on worker mobility frictions or policies like non-competes. Innovation and technological change, long recognized as the main drivers of long-term economic growth, are elusive notions that are difficult to conceptualize and even harder to measure in a consistent, systematic way. This book demonstrates the usefulness of patents and citations data as a window on the process of technological change and as a powerful tool for research on the economics of innovation. Patent records contain a wealth of information, including the inventors' identity, location, and employer, as well as the technological field of the invention. Patents also contain citation references to previous patents, which allow one to trace links across inventions. The book lays out the...	Manuel Trajtenberg, Adam B. Jaffe
8	2002	Geographic Localization of International Technology Diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the geography of technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers, which is central to understanding how ideas move across agents and locations. It does not focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level hiring decisions, but its evidence on localized spillovers and the role of language skills provides useful context for the broader mechanisms of knowledge transfer. Income convergence across countries turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local. I estimate the amount of spillovers from R&D expenditures on a geographic basis, using a new data set which encompasses most of the world's innovative activity between 1970 and 1995. I find that technology is to a substantial degree local, not global, as the benefits from spillovers are declining with distance. The distance at which the amount of spillovers is halved is about 1,200 kilometers. I also find that over time, technological knowledge has become considerably more global. Moreover, language skills are important for spillover diffusion.	Wolfgang Keller
8	1999	The Structure of Wages and Investment in General Training ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market frictions alter firms’ incentives to fund general training, which is a key channel through which worker mobility and wage-setting affect knowledge and human capital accumulation. While it is not specifically about inventors, non-competes, or technology diffusion across firms, it provides important theory on how frictions shape skill investment and the formation of de facto firm-specific human capital. In the human capital model with perfect labor markets, firms never invest in general skills and all cost of general training are borne by workers. When lobor market frictions compress the structure of wages, firms may pay for these investments. The distortion in the wage structure turns "technologically" general skills into de facto "specific " skills. Credit market imperfections are neither neccessary nor sufficient for firm‐sponsored training. Since labor market frictions and insititutions shape the wage structure, they may have an important impact on the financing and amount of human capital investments and account for some international differences in training practices.	Daron Acemoğlu, Jörn‐Steffen Pischke
8	2002	Patents, Citations, and Innovations ↗ This book is closely related because it uses patent and citation data to study technological change and knowledge spillovers, which are central to understanding how innovations diffuse across firms and locations. It is especially relevant for the project’s interest in inventor identity, location, employer links, and geographic patterns of knowledge diffusion, though it does not focus primarily on labor market frictions or worker mobility policies. Innovation and technological change, long recognized as the main drivers of long-term economic growth, are elusive notions that are difficult to conceptualize and even harder to measure in a consistent, systematic way. This book demonstrates the usefulness of patents and citations data as a window on the process of technological change and as a powerful tool for research on the economics of innovation. Patent records contain a wealth of information, including the inventors' identity, location, and employer, as well as the technological field of the invention. Patents also contain citation references to previous patents, which allow one to trace links across inventions. The book lays out the...	Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg
8	2010	The Economics of Science ↗ This chapter is closely related because it studies the economics of science, including scientific labor markets, incentives to produce and share knowledge, and the relationship between research and economic growth. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility, non-competes, or firm-to-firm knowledge diffusion, its emphasis on knowledge as a public good and on the allocation of scientists makes it relevant background for understanding technology spillovers. This chapter examines the contributions that economists have made to the study of science and the types of contributions the profession is positioned to make in the future. Special emphasis is placed on the public nature of knowledge and characteristics of the reward structure that encourage the production and sharing of knowledge. The role that cognitive and noncognitive resources play in discovery is discussed as well as the costs of resources used in research. Different models for the funding of research are presented. The chapter also discusses scientific labor markets and the extreme difficulty encountered in forecasting the demand for and supply of scientists. The chapter closes with...	Paula E. Stephan
8	1999	International Technology Diffusion: Theory and Measurement ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion explicitly, including how ideas move across countries and how patenting affects the incentives to invent and adopt new technologies. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor-market frictions, but it provides strong theoretical and empirical background on the diffusion of knowledge and its aggregate growth effects. We model the invention of new technologies and their diffusion across countries. In our model all countries grow at the same steady‐state rate, with each country's productivity ranking determined by how rapidly it adopts ideas. Research effort is determined by how much ideas earn at home and abroad. Patents affect the return to ideas. We relate the decision to patent an invention internationally to the cost of patenting in a country and to the expected value of patent protection in that country. We can thus infer the direction and magnitude of the international diffusion of technology from data on international patenting, productivity, and research. We fit the model to data from the five...	Jonathan Eaton, Samuel Kortum
8	2003	Network structure and the diffusion of knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge diffuses through a network of agents, which maps directly onto the project’s interest in diffusion mechanisms and the role of frictions in moving ideas across workers and firms. It is less specific to labor market institutions like non-competes or inventor mobility, but its analysis of network structure and informal knowledge trading provides useful theory for how worker connections shape the speed and distribution of spillovers. This paper models knowledge diffusion as a barter process in which agents exchange different types of knowledge. This is intended to capture the observed practice of informal knowledge trading. Agents are located on a network and are directly connected with a small number of other agents. Agents repeatedly meet those with whom direct connections exist and trade if mutually profitable trades exist. In this way knowledge diffuses throughout the economy. We examine the relationship between network architecture and diffusion performance. We consider the space of structures that fall between, at one extreme, a network in which every agent is connected to n nearest neighbours, and at the other...	Robin Cowan, Nicolas Jonard
8	2000	Knowledge Spillovers and Patent Citations: Evidence from a Survey of Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers and how inventions draw on prior work, which is central to understanding technology diffusion across firms and innovators. Although it focuses on patent citations and survey evidence rather than worker mobility or labor-market frictions directly, it provides useful evidence on the channels through which knowledge moves and is measured. Knowledge Spillovers and Patent Citations: Evidence from a Survey of Inventors by Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg and Michael S. Fogarty. Published in volume 90, issue 2, pages 215-218 of American Economic Review, May 2000	Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg, Michael S. Fogarty
8	1996	Knowledge sourcing by foreign multinationals: Patent citation analysis in the U.S. semiconductor industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how multinational firms learn from and contribute to local knowledge pools, which is central to technology diffusion and spillovers across firms and regions. Although it focuses more on foreign direct investment and patent citations than worker mobility per se, its findings on local knowledge sourcing and contribution are highly relevant to understanding how knowledge moves through labor-market and firm-level channels. Abstract Do multinationals go abroad to acquire technological knowledge? Do they also contribute knowledge locally? We investigate the learning and contribution patterns of multinational firms in the U.S. semiconductor industry through the analysis of citations to their patents and through field interviews. We find that the knowledge used in innovation by foreign subsidiaries in U.S. regions is predominantly local (at the regional and country level). In fact, foreign firms use regional knowledge significantly more than similar domestic firms. In the case of European and Korean firms, foreign investment is directed towards offsetting home country technological weaknesses. The study finds...	Paul Almeida
8	1998	GEOGRAPHICALLY LOCALIZED KNOWLEDGE: SPILLOVERS OR MARKETS? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge moves from universities to firms through localized scientist-firm interactions, which is directly relevant to technology diffusion via worker and expert mobility. Its emphasis on market exchange, coauthorship, and star scientist linkages also speaks to firm-level channels of knowledge transfer and the productivity effects of such mobility-like connections, though it is less about labor market frictions or policy restrictions on movement. Using detailed data on California biotechnology, we find that the positive impact of research universities on nearby firms relates to identifiable market exchange between particular university star scientists and firms and not to generalized knowledge spillovers. Poisson and two‐stage Heckman regressions indicate the number of star‐firm collaborations powerfully predicts success: for an average firm, five articles coauthored by academic stars and the firm's scientists imply about five more products in development, 3.5 more products on the market, and 860 more employees. Stars collaborating with or employed by firms, or who patent, have significantly higher citation rates than pure academic...	Lynne G. Zucker, Michael R. Darby, Jeff Armstrong
8	2013	Corporate Innovations and Mergers and Acquisitions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how acquisitions combine innovation capabilities and how technological linkages between firms affect patenting after mergers, which speaks directly to the diffusion and reorganization of knowledge across firms. It is less about worker mobility specifically, but it is highly relevant for understanding firm-level mechanisms that shift inventive activity, spillovers, and the allocation of innovation within the economy. ABSTRACT Using a large and unique patent‐merger data set over the period 1984 to 2006, we show that companies with large patent portfolios and low R&D expenses are acquirers, while companies with high R&D expenses and slow growth in patent output are targets. Further, technological overlap between firm pairs has a positive effect on transaction incidence, and this effect is reduced for firm pairs that overlap in product markets. We also show that acquirers with prior technological linkage to their target firms produce more patents afterwards. We conclude that synergies obtained from combining innovation capabilities are important drivers of acquisitions.	Jan Bena, Kai Li
8	2006	Complexity, networks and knowledge flow ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge flows through social networks among inventors and firms, using patent citations to show how proximity affects diffusion by knowledge complexity. It is not primarily about labor market frictions or worker mobility policies, but it speaks directly to the mechanisms through which inventor networks, firm boundaries, and geography shape technology transfer and spillovers. Because knowledge plays an important role in the creation of wealth, economic actors often wish to skew the flow of knowledge in their favor. We ask, when will an actor socially close to the source of some knowledge have the greatest advantage over distant actors in receiving and building on the knowledge? Marrying a social network perspective with a view of knowledge transfer as a search process, we argue that the value of social proximity to the knowledge source depends crucially on the nature of the knowledge at hand. Simple knowledge diffuses equally to close and distant actors because distant recipients with poor connections to the source of the knowledge can compensate for their...	Olav Sorenson, Jan W. Rivkin, Lee Fleming
8	2015	Does Going Public Affect Innovation? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firm financing and organizational changes affect inventor mobility, the retention of skilled workers, and the quality of innovation. Although it is not primarily about labor market frictions or diffusion across firms, the observed exodus of inventors and shifts toward external innovation speak directly to knowledge transfer and human capital movement. ABSTRACT This paper investigates the effects of going public on innovation by comparing the innovation activity of firms that go public with firms that withdraw their initial public offering (IPO) filing and remain private. NASDAQ fluctuations during the book‐building phase are used as an instrument for IPO completion. Using patent‐based metrics, I find that the quality of internal innovation declines following the IPO, and firms experience both an exodus of skilled inventors and a decline in the productivity of the remaining inventors. However, public firms attract new human capital and acquire external innovation. The analysis reveals that going public changes firms' strategies in...	Shai Bernstein
8	2005	Entry by Spinoffs ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies spinoff entry as a mechanism for knowledge transfer from incumbent firms to new firms, which is central to how worker and entrepreneur mobility diffuses technology. Its focus on inherited knowledge, industry dynamics, and technological change makes it highly relevant to the project’s themes, though it is less directly about labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions. Entry by spinoffs from incumbent firms is investigated for the laser industry. A model in which spinoffs exploit knowledge from their parents is constructed to explain the market conditions conducive to spinoffs, the types of firms that spawn spinoffs, and the relationship of spinoffs to their parents. The model is tested using detailed data on all laser entrants from the start of the industry through 1994. Our findings support the basic premise of the model that spinoffs inherit knowledge from their parents that shapes their nature at birth. Implications of our findings for organizational behavior, business strategy, entry and industry evolution, and technological change are discussed.	Steven Klepper, S. Sleeper
8	2004	Is knowledge power? Knowledge flows, subsidiary power and rent-seeking within MNCs ↗ [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it explicitly studies knowledge flows within multinational corporations, which is central to how worker and unit-level mobility can transmit technology and know-how across organizational boundaries. The references to subsidiary power and rent-seeking suggest it may focus more on internal firm politics than labor-market frictions like non-competes or inventor mobility, so it is closely related but not a perfect match. No abstract available.	Ram Mudambi, Pietro Navarra	Other
8	2010	How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies skilled immigration as a channel for innovation and patenting, which is central to how mobile workers contribute to knowledge creation and diffusion. It does not focus on firm-to-firm worker movement or labor market frictions like non-competes, but it provides important evidence on the aggregate innovation effects of skilled labor inflows. We measure the extent to which skilled immigrants increase innovation in the United States. The 2003 National Survey of College Graduates shows that immigrants patent at double the native rate, due to their disproportionately holding science and engineering degrees. Using a 1940–2000 state panel, we show that a 1 percentage point increase in immigrant college graduates' population share increases patents per capita by 9–18 percent. Our instrument for the change in the skilled immigrant share is based on the 1940 distribution across states of immigrants from various source regions and the subsequent national increase in skilled immigration from these regions. (JEL J24, J61, O31, O33)	Jennifer Hunt, Marjolaine Gauthier‐Loiselle
8	2006	Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows: The Influence of Examiner Citations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and spillovers. It is especially useful methodologically for any work using citations to infer inventor mobility, firm-level learning, or the impact of labor market frictions on knowledge transmission, since it shows that pooled citations can be seriously contaminated by examiner-added noise. Analysis of patent citations is a core methodology in the study of knowledge diffusion. However, citations made by patent examiners have not been separately reported, adding unknown noise to the data. We leverage a recent change in the reporting of patent data showing citations added by examiners. The magnitude is high: two-thirds of citations on the average patent are inserted by examiners. Furthermore, 40% of all patents have all citations added by examiners. We analyze the distribution of examiner and inventor citations with respect to self-citation, distance, technology overlap, and vintage. Results indicate that inferences about inventor knowledge using pooled citations may suffer from...	Juan Alcácer, Michelle Gittelman
8	2009	Lone Inventors as Sources of Breakthroughs: Myth or Reality? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how collaboration and inventor networks affect the quality and extremity of patent outcomes, which is directly relevant to knowledge creation and diffusion through worker mobility and interaction. While it does not focus on labor market frictions or mobility policies, its evidence on team composition, external collaboration networks, and breakthrough invention informs how human capital transfer and inventive spillovers operate across firms. Are lone inventors more or less likely to invent breakthroughs? Recent research has attempted to resolve this question by considering the variance of creative outcome distributions. It has implicitly assumed a symmetric thickening or thinning of both tails, i.e., that a greater probability of breakthroughs comes at the cost of a greater probability of failures. In contrast, we propose that collaboration can have opposite effects at the two extremes: it reduces the probability of very poor outcomes—because of more rigorous selection processes—while simultaneously increasing the probability of extremely successful outcomes—because of greater recombinant opportunity in creative search...	Jasjit Singh, Lee Fleming
8	2002	Tacit Knowledge, Innovation and Economic Geography ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on tacit knowledge, innovation, and knowledge spillovers as shaped by geography, which aligns with the project’s interest in how knowledge diffuses across firms and locations. However, it is more about spatial economic geography and conceptual gaps in spillover literature than about worker mobility, labor market frictions, or policy mechanisms like non-competes and search frictions. The aim of this paper is to outline the importance of tacit knowledge in the innovation process and to highlight the way that geographical location not only influences the relationship between knowledge and innovative activity, but also affects the way that such interaction influences the geography of innovation and economic activity. After a discussion about the nature of knowledge, the paper explores the relationship that exists between knowledge and geography. The paper then reviews, using as an analytical lens, the growing body of literature on knowledge spillovers which affirm the importance of geography. However, the discussion then seeks to outline some crucial gaps that remain in...	Jeremy Howells
8	1999	The New Economics Of Innovation, Spillovers And Agglomeration: Areview Of Empirical Studies ↗ This review is highly relevant because it directly discusses knowledge spillovers transmitted through skilled labor mobility, one of the project’s central mechanisms. It also covers empirical work on innovation, agglomeration, and geographic spillovers, which provides useful context for understanding how worker movement affects technology diffusion and productivity. This paper reviews recent empirical studies of location and innovation. The objective is to highlight the questions addressed, approaches adopted, and further issues that remain. The review is organized around the traditions of measuring geographically mediated spillovers and productivity studies that introduce a geographic dimension. The first part identilies four separate strains in thc empirical spillover literature: innovation production functions; the linkages between patent citations. defined as paper trails: the rnobility of skilled labor based on the notion that knowledge spillovers are transmitted through people; and, last, knowledge spillovers embodied in traded goods. The second...	Maryann P. Feldman
8	2002	R&D spillovers, patents and the incentives to innovate in Japan and the United States ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies R&D spillovers and how patents shape the diffusion of knowledge across rival firms, which is central to understanding technology transfer and innovation incentives. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, but it provides useful evidence on an alternative mechanism of knowledge diffusion and on how policy affects the flow of information across firms. National surveys of RandD labs across the manufacturing sectors in the US and Japan show that intraindustry RandD knowledge flows and spillovers are greater in Japan than in the US and the appropriability of rents due to innovation less. Patents in particular are observed to play a more central role in diffusing information across rivals in Japan, and appear to be a key reason for greater intraindustry RandD spillovers there, suggesting that patent policy can importantly affect information flows. Uses of patents differ between the two nations, with strategic uses of patents, particularly for negotiations, being more common in Japan. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.	Wesley M. Cohen, Akira Gotō, Akiya Nagata, et al.
8	2001	Does Foreign Direct Investment Transfer Technology Across Borders? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion across borders through foreign direct investment, which is a major channel of knowledge transfer relevant to the project’s interest in spillovers and productivity growth. However, it focuses on international FDI and trade rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or inventor/engineer movement, so it is adjacent rather than central. Previous studies have found that importing goods from R&D-intensive countries raises a country's productivity. In this paper, we investigate econometrically whether foreign direct investment (FDI) also transfers technology across borders. The data indicates that FDI transfers technology, but only in one direction: a country's productivity is increased if it invests in R&D-intensive foreign countries—particularly in recent years—but not if foreign R&D-intensive countries invest in it. Other findings of the paper are that the ratio of foreign-R&D benefits conveyed by outward FDI to foreign R&D benefits conveyed by imports is higher for large countries than it is for small ones, that failure...	Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Frank R. Lichtenberg
8	2005	Is foreign direct investment a channel of knowledge spillovers? Evidence from Japan's FDI in the United States ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers across firms and identifies foreign direct investment as a channel through which technology and innovative information diffuse. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it directly addresses the broader mechanism of how firm-level actions facilitate knowledge transfer and innovation spillovers. Recent empirical work has examined the extent to which international trade fosters international "spillovers" of technological information. FDI is an alternate, potentially equally important channel for the mediation of such knowledge spillovers. I introduce a framework for measuring international knowledge spillovers at the firm level, and I use this framework to directly test the hypothesis that FDI is a channel of knowledge spillovers for Japanese multinationals undertaking direct investments in the United States. Using an original firm-level panel data set on Japanese firms' FDI and innovative activity, I find evidence that FDI increases the flow of knowledge spillovers both from and to...	Lee Branstetter
8	2008	On the Role Played by Temporary Geographical Proximity in Knowledge Transmission ↗ This paper is closely related because it explicitly links knowledge transmission to the mobility of individuals, which is a central mechanism in your project. However, it focuses more on temporary geographic proximity and short-term visits than on labor market frictions, non-competes, or firm-level incentives, so it is supportive context rather than a direct match. Torre A. On the role played by temporary geographical proximity in knowledge transmission, Regional Studies. This paper defends the thesis that geographical proximity remains essential for knowledge transfer, but not often implies the co-location of innovation and research activities. The need for geographical proximity now mostly affects certain stages of the process of production, research or development. Short- or medium-term visits are often sufficient for the partners to exchange the information needed for cooperation. The mobility of individuals makes it possible to implement this mechanism. Temporary geographical proximity implies a strong relation to space, but one that differs in...	André Torre
8	2010	Superstar Extinction<sup>*</sup> ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the loss of highly productive researchers affects the output of their collaborators through coauthorship networks, which is directly relevant to knowledge diffusion via worker mobility and social connections. While it does not focus on labor market frictions or policy interventions like non-competes, it provides strong evidence on the spatial and network boundaries of spillovers among inventors/scientists. We estimate the magnitude of spillovers generated by 112 academic "superstars" who died prematurely and unexpectedly, thus providing an exogenous source of variation in the structure of their collaborators' coauthorship networks. Following the death of a superstar, we find that collaborators experience, on average, a lasting 5% to 8% decline in their quality-adjusted publication rates. By exploring interactions of the treatment effect with a variety of star, coauthor, and star/coauthor dyad characteristics, we seek to adjudicate between plausible mechanisms that might explain this finding. Taken together, our results suggest that spillovers are circumscribed in idea space, but less so in...	Pierre Azoulay, Joshua Graff Zivin, Jialan Wang
8	2002	The capabilities of new firms and the evolution of the US automobile industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how founder and employee experience from leading firms carries into new firms, directly touching on worker-driven knowledge transfer and spillovers. Its focus is on entrepreneurial entry and industry evolution in automobiles rather than labor market frictions like non-competes or formal mobility policy, but the mechanism of skilled worker movement as a conduit for technology diffusion is highly relevant. Firms that diversify into new and existing industries typically outperform de novo entrants, but in some new industries diversifying firms are displaced by later-entering de novo firms. Little is known about when and how new firms can overcome the advantages of diversifying firms. This is investigated for one industry, automobiles, where new firms had considerable success. All the entrants into the industry from its inception in 1895 through 1966 are identified. The heritage of every entrant into the industry is traced, including the founders of de novo entrants, to explore how time of entry and pre-entry experience affected firm survival. While diversifying firms on average outperformed de...	Steven Klepper
8	2005	Entrepreneurial Spawning: Public Corporations and the Genesis of New Ventures, 1986 to 1999 ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies entrepreneurial spawning as a mechanism for the movement of knowledge, skills, and networks from incumbent firms to new ventures. Its focus on venture-backed firms, regional clusters like Silicon Valley and Massachusetts, and the role of employee learning directly connects to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion, though it is more about start-up creation than broader labor market frictions or policy. ABSTRACT We examine two views of the creation of venture‐backed start‐ups, or “entrepreneurial spawning.” In one, young firms prepare employees for entrepreneurship, educating them about the process, and exposing them to relevant networks. In the other, individuals become entrepreneurs when large bureaucratic employers do not fund their ideas. Controlling for firm size, patents, and industry, the most prolific spawners are originally venture‐backed companies located in Silicon Valley and Massachusetts. Undiversified firms spawn more firms. Silicon Valley, Massachusetts, and originally venture‐backed firms typically spawn firms only peripherally related to their core businesses. Overall...	Paul A. Gompers, Josh Lerner, David Scharfstein
8	2007	Disagreements, Spinoffs, and the Evolution of Detroit as the Capital of the U.S. Automobile Industry ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies worker-led spinoffs as a mechanism for industry formation and geographic concentration, which is closely tied to how labor mobility transmits knowledge across firms. Although it focuses more on entrepreneurial disagreement and regional agglomeration than on policy frictions like non-competes, it directly speaks to employee movement, firm entry, and the diffusion of know-how through spinouts. The agglomeration of the automobile industry around Detroit, Michigan is explained using a theory in which disagreements lead employees of incumbent firms to found spinoffs in the same industry. Predictions of the theory concerning entry and firm survival are tested using data on the origin, location, and years of production of every entrant into the industry from 1895 to 1966. The geographic concentration of the industry is attributed to four early successful entrants and the many successful spinoffs they spawned in the Detroit area and not to conventional agglomeration economies benefiting co-located firms, as featured in modern theories of agglomeration. Implications of the findings...	Steven Klepper
8	1987	Cooperation between rivals: Informal know-how trading ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a concrete channel of knowledge diffusion across rival firms through informal trading of proprietary know-how among process engineers. While it focuses more on cooperative exchange than worker mobility or labor-market frictions, the emphasis on technical knowledge transfer between firms is highly relevant to understanding spillovers, diffusion, and firm incentives. "Informal" know-how trading is the extensive exchange of proprietary know-how by informal networks of process engineers in rival (and non-rival) firms. I have observed such know-how trading networks to be very active in the US steel minimill industry and elsewhere, and they appear to represent a novel form of cooperative R&D. When one examines informal know-how trading in the framework of a "Prisoner's Dilemma", real-world conditions can be specified where this behavior both does and does not make economic sense from the point of view of participating firms. Data available to date on the presence and absence of such trading seem to be roughly in accordance with the predictions of this...	Eric von Hippel
8	1997	Training and Innovation in an Imperfect Labour Market ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market frictions shape the capture of returns to training and how worker mobility across employers affects knowledge and productivity spillovers. It also links training incentives to firms’ innovation decisions, which aligns well with the project’s focus on how hiring, retention, and labor market frictions influence technology diffusion and growth. This paper shows that in a frictional labour market part of the productivity gains from general training will be captured by future employers. As a result, investments in general skills will be suboptimally low, and contrary to the standard theory, part of the costs may be borne by the employers. The paper also demonstrates that the interaction between innovation and training leads to an amplification of this inefficiency and to a multiplicity of equilibria. Workers are more willing to invest in their skills by accepting lower wages today if they expect more firms to innovate and pay them higher wages in the future. Similarly, firms are more willing to innovate when they expect the quality...	Daron Acemoğlu
8	2007	The Theory of Knowledge Spillover Entrepreneurship* ↗ This paper is closely related because it explicitly studies how knowledge created inside incumbent firms spills over into new ventures, making entrepreneurship a channel of technology diffusion. It is highly relevant to the project’s focus on knowledge transfer and spillovers, though it is less directly about worker mobility frictions, non-competes, or labor market mechanisms. abstract The prevailing theories of entrepreneurship have typically revolved around the ability of individuals to recognize opportunities and then to act on them by starting a new venture. This has generated a literature asking why entrepreneurial behaviour varies across individuals with different characteristics while implicitly holding constant the external context in which the individual finds herself. Thus, where the opportunities come from, or the source of entrepreneurial opportunities, is also implicitly taken as given. By contrast, in this paper an important source of entrepreneurial opportunities is identified – knowledge and ideas created in an incumbent organization. By...	David B. Audretsch, Max Keilbach
8	2013	Wrongful Discharge Laws and Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market institutions shape innovation incentives by affecting firms’ ability to hold up employees after they generate successful ideas. Although it focuses on wrongful discharge rather than mobility restrictions like non-competes, it speaks directly to how worker protections and contracting frictions influence innovative effort, new firm creation, and knowledge production. We show that wrongful discharge laws - laws that protect employees against unjust dismissal - spur innovation and new firm creation. Wrongful discharge laws, particularly those that prohibit employers from acting in bad faith ex post, limit employers' ability to hold up innovating employees after the innovation is successful. By reducing the possibility of holdup, these laws enhance employees'innovative efforts and encourage firms to invest in risky but potentially mould-breaking projects. We develop a model and provide supporting empirical evidence of this effect using the staggered adoption of wrongful discharge laws across U.S. states.	Viral V. Acharya, Ramin Baghai, Krishnamurthy Subramanian
8	2002	When Does Start-Up Innovation Spur the Gale of Creative Destruction? ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a Schumpeterian growth and innovation-dynamics paper about how startup innovation triggers displacement of incumbents, which is closely related to technology diffusion, firm dynamics, and aggregate productivity effects. While it does not explicitly mention worker mobility or labor market frictions, the focus on creative destruction and startup innovation likely connects to the mechanisms through which knowledge and talent move across firms. No abstract available.	Joshua S. Gans, David H. Hsu, Scott Stern
8	2009	The missing link: knowledge diffusion and entrepreneurship in endogenous growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion as a mechanism of endogenous growth and explicitly links diffusion to entrepreneurial activity, which is relevant to how knowledge moves across economic agents. It is somewhat less direct than a worker-mobility paper because it focuses on entrepreneurship rather than labor market frictions or inventor movement, but its policy implications about facilitating knowledge transfer and growth are clearly aligned with the project. The intellectual breakthrough contributed by the new growth theory was the recognition that investments in knowledge and human capital endogenously generate economic growth through the spillover of knowledge. However, endogenous growth theory does not explain how or why spillovers occur. This paper presents a model that shows how growth depends on knowledge accumulation and its diffusion through both incumbents and entrepreneurial activities. We claim that entrepreneurs are one missing link in converting knowledge into economically relevant knowledge. Implementing different regression techniques for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during 1981 to...	Pontus Braunerhjelm, Zoltán J. Ács, David B. Audretsch, et al.
8	2011	Who leaves, where to, and why worry? employee mobility, entrepreneurship and effects on source firm performance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee mobility as a channel of knowledge transfer, with a specific focus on how workers leaving to found new ventures affects the source firm’s performance. While it is centered on entrepreneurship rather than diffusion of technology across incumbent firms, its evidence on high-performing employees, retention, and firm-level consequences maps well to the project’s themes of labor mobility, human capital transfer, and strategic compensation. Abstract We theorize that the value provided by the firm's complementary assets has important implications for the exit decisions of employees and their subsequent effects on the firm's performance. Using linked employee‐employer data from the U.S. Census Bureau on legal services, we find that employees with higher earnings are less likely to leave relative to employees with lower earnings, but if they do, are more likely to create a new venture than join another firm. Employee entrepreneurship has a larger adverse impact on source firm performance than moves to established firms, even controlling for observable employee quality. Our findings suggest that in knowledge intensive settings...	Benjamin A. Campbell, Martin Ganco, April Franco, et al.
8	2009	Ties that Truly Bind: Noncompetition Agreements, Executive Compensation, and Firm Investment ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete enforceability as a labor market friction that affects worker mobility, executive stability, and firms’ investment behavior. It is especially relevant for understanding how restrictions on movement shape human capital accumulation and R&D investment, though it focuses on executives rather than inventors or broader knowledge diffusion across firms. We study the effects of non-competition agreements by analyzing time-series and cross-sectional variation in the enforceability of these contracts across U.S. states. We find that tougher non-competition enforcement promotes executive stability. Increased enforceability also results in re-duced executive compensation and shifts its form towards greater use of salary. We further show that stricter enforcement reduces research and development spending and capital expenditures per employee. These results are consistent with a model in which enforceable non-competition con-tracts encourage firms to invest in their managers ’ human capital. On the other hand, our findings suggest that these...	Mark J. Garmaise
8	2006	Urban density and the rate of invention ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how urban density affects patenting and knowledge spillovers, which is directly relevant to the diffusion of ideas and innovation in the project. However, it focuses on city-level externalities rather than worker mobility or labor market frictions, so it informs the broader context more than the core mechanism. Economists, beginning with Alfred Marshall, have studied the significance of cities in the production and exploitation of information externalities that, today, we call knowledge spillovers. This paper presents robust evidence of those effects. We show that patent intensity-the per capita invention rate-is positively related to the density of employment in the highly urbanized portion of MAs. All else equal, a city with twice the employment density (jobs per square mile) of another city will exhibit a patent intensity (patents per capita) that is 20 percent higher. Patent intensity is maximized at an employment density of about 2200 jobs per square mile. A city with a more competitive...	Gerald A. Carlino, Satyajit Chatterjee, Robert M. Hunt
8	1996	How does knowledge flow? Interfirm patterns in the semiconductor industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interfirm knowledge spillovers and the mechanisms through which knowledge diffuses across company boundaries, which is central to the project’s focus on technology diffusion. However, it appears to emphasize public technical data and industry/national institutions more than worker mobility, labor-market frictions, or inventor movement as the transmission channel. Abstract Although knowledge spillovers between firms play a critical role in the evolution of technology, we know little about such spillovers. How does knowledge flow across company boundaries? How do industry characteristics and national institutions shape knowledge diffusion? To what extent do companies direct knowledge flows? This study seeks answers to these questions by examining knowledge sharing patterns in the semiconductor industry. The research shows that public sources of technical data play a larger role in knowledge diffusion in Japan than in the United States and in semiconductors relative to steel. By understanding the mechanisms and determinants of knowledge flows, company...	Melissa M. Appleyard
8	1997	The Exploration of Technological Diversity and Geographic Localization in Innovation: Start-Up Firms in the Semiconductor Industry ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of how innovation is shaped by technological diversity and geographic clustering, which is closely related to knowledge diffusion, spillovers, and localized learning. The semiconductor industry and start-up firms are especially relevant to worker mobility and technology transfer, though the title does not explicitly mention labor-market frictions or inventor movement. No abstract available.	Paul Almeida, Bruce Kogut
8	2005	Determinants of Knowledge Flows and Their Effect on Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the geography of knowledge diffusion using patent citations and quantifies how cross-region knowledge flows affect innovation. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its gravity-style approach to knowledge spillovers and their innovation effects is highly relevant background for understanding diffusion mechanisms. Knowledge flows within and across countries may have important consequences for both productivity and innovation. We use data on 1.5 million patents and 4.5 million citations to estimate knowledge flows at the frontier of technology across 147 subnational regions during 1975-1996 within the frame of a gravity-like equation. We estimate that only 20% of average knowledge is learned outside the average region of origin, and only 9% is learned outside the country of origin. However, knowledge in the computer sector flows substantially farther, as does knowledge generated by technological leaders. In comparison with trade flows, we see that knowledge flows reach much farther. External...	Giovanni Peri
8	2017	Do General Managerial Skills Spur Innovation? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how executive labor mobility and non-compete enforceability shape innovation, directly tying labor market frictions to patenting outcomes. Its focus is on CEOs and general managerial skills rather than worker/inventor mobility more broadly, but it provides relevant evidence on how mobile talent and knowledge acquired across firms can promote technology diffusion and innovation. We show that firms with chief executive officers (CEOs) who gain general managerial skills over their lifetime of work experience produce more patents. We address the potential endogenous CEO–firm matching bias using firm–CEO fixed effects and variation in the enforceability of noncompete agreements across states and over time during the CEO’s career. Our findings suggest that generalist CEOs spur innovation because they acquire knowledge beyond the firm’s current technological domain, and they have skills that can be applied elsewhere should innovation projects fail. We conclude that an efficient labor market for executives can promote innovation by providing a mechanism of tolerance for...	Cláudia Custódio, Miguel A. Ferreira, Pedro Matos
8	2013	Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how intellectual property rights restrict subsequent innovation and knowledge diffusion, which is central to understanding frictions that slow the spread of new technology. Although it does not focus on worker mobility, non-competes, or labor market mechanisms, it provides strong evidence on a different institutional barrier to follow-on research and product development. Do intellectual property (IP) rights on existing technologies hinder subsequent innovation? Using newly-collected data on the sequencing of the human genome by the public Human Genome Project and the private firm Celera, this paper estimates the impact of Celera's gene-level IP on subsequent scientific research and product development. Genes initially sequenced by Celera were held with IP for up to two years, but moved into the public domain once re-sequenced by the public effort. Across a range of empirical specifications, I find evidence that Celera's IP led to reductions in subsequent scientific research and product development on the order of 20 to 30 percent. Taken together, these...	Heidi Williams	Other
8	2005	Spillovers from Foreign Firms through Worker Mobility: An Empirical Investigation* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology and productivity spillovers operating through worker mobility, specifically how experience gained at multinational firms transfers to domestic firms. It speaks directly to knowledge diffusion across firms via labor movement, though it focuses more on firm productivity than on policy frictions like non-competes or mobility costs. Abstract While there is a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from multinationals, this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. The new approach in this paper is to investigate whether spillovers occur via worker mobility. We use data on whether or not the owner of a domestic firm has previous experience in a multinational, and relate this information to firm‐level productivity. Our results suggest that firms which are run by owners who worked for multinationals in the same industry immediately prior to opening up their own firm are more productive than other domestic firms.	Holger Görg, Eric Strobl
8	2005	Patent Citations and the Geography of Knowledge Spillovers: A Reassessment ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the geography of knowledge spillovers using patent citations, which is directly relevant to how ideas diffuse across firms and locations. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor-market frictions like non-competes, it informs the broader mechanism of knowledge transmission that the project studies. Patent Citations and the Geography of Knowledge Spillovers: A Reassessment by Peter Thompson and Melanie Fox-Kean. Published in volume 95, issue 1, pages 450-460 of American Economic Review, March 2005	Peter Thompson, Melanie Fox-Kean
8	2003	Liquidity Events and the Geographic Distribution of Entrepreneurial Activity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility and non-compete enforceability shape the geographic diffusion of entrepreneurial activity after liquidity events, which is central to knowledge spillovers through labor markets. It directly links firm exits and employee movement to new venture creation, offering evidence on how labor market frictions condition technology and knowledge transfer across firms and regions. In this paper, we examine the ecological consequences of initial public offerings (IPOs) and acquisitions, specifically how the spatial distribution of these events influences the location-specific founding rates of new companies. We explore whether relatively small spatial units (metropolitan statistical areas) in close geographic proximity to firms that recently have been acquired or experienced an IPO exhibit high new venture creation rates and whether the magnitudes of these effects depend on regional differences in statutes governing the freedom of employees to move between employers. Count models of biotechnology firm foundings establish three findings: (1) IPOs of organizations...	Toby E. Stuart, Olav Sorenson
8	2002	Trade and the Transmission of Technology ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly links trade to the transmission of technology, which is central to how knowledge diffuses across firms and economies. It may focus more on international trade channels than worker mobility specifically, but it likely speaks to broader mechanisms of technology diffusion, spillovers, and productivity growth. No abstract available.	Wolfgang Keller
8	2007	Distributed R&D, cross-regional knowledge integration and quality of innovative output ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility and cross-regional ties facilitate knowledge transfer and affect the quality of innovative output. It also speaks to the role of organizational and geographic frictions in integrating dispersed R&D, which is directly relevant to understanding how labor mobility shapes technology diffusion and firm-level innovation performance. We explore the impact of geographic dispersion of a firm's R&D activities on the quality of its innovative output. Using data on over half a million patents from 1127 firms, we find that having geographically distributed R&D per se does not improve the quality of a firm's innovations. In fact, distributed R&D appears to be negatively associated with average value of innovations. This suggests that potential gains from access to diverse ideas and expertise from different locations are, on average, offset by difficulty in achieving integration of knowledge across multiple locations. To investigate whether the innovating teams that do manage cross-fertilization of ideas from different...	Jasjit Singh
8	2005	Do alliances promote knowledge flows? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a direct mechanism of knowledge diffusion across firms and measures how alliances affect patent-citation-based technology flows. While it is not primarily about worker mobility or labor-market frictions, it is highly relevant as a firm-level channel of interorganizational spillovers that complements the project’s focus on how knowledge moves across firms. We explore the role of interfirm alliances as a mechanism for sharing technological knowledge. We argue that knowledge flows between alliance partners will be greater than flows between pairs of nonallied firms, and less than flows between units within single firms. Using patent citations as a proxy for knowledge flows, we find results that are consistent with these expectations. We then explore how firm characteristics affect knowledge flows within alliances and find positive effects due to technological, geographic, and business similarities between partners. We use alliance data from MERIT, patent data from the USPTO, and firm data from Compustat. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.	Benjamin Gomes-Casseres, John Hagedoorn, Adam B. Jaffe
8	2002	Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the geographic localization of knowledge spillovers using patent citations, which is directly relevant to how ideas diffuse across firms and regions. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides important evidence on the spatial pattern of knowledge transfer that those frictions may shape. We compare the geographic location of patent citations to those of the cited patents, as evidence of the extent to which knowledge spillovers are geographically localized.We find that citations to U.S. patents are more likely to come from the U.S., and more likely to come from the same state and SMSA as the cited patents than one would expect based only on the preexisting concentration of related research activity.These effects are particularly significant at the local (SMSA) level, and are particularly apparent in early citations.
8	1999	International Knowledge Flows: Evidence From Patent Citations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies international knowledge flows using patent citations, which are a direct proxy for technology diffusion across inventors, firms, and countries. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its evidence on firm, class, and country patterns in citation timing and intensity is highly relevant for understanding how knowledge spreads through innovative activity. This paper explores the patterns of citations among patents taken out by inventors in the U.S., the U.K., Francc. Germany and Japan. We find (I) patents assigned to the same firm are more likely to cite each other, and come sooncr than other citations; (2) patents in the same patent class are approxinlatcly 100 titlles as likely to cite each other as ydtents froin different patent classes, but there is not a strong time pattern to this effect; (3) patents whose inventors reside in the same country are typically 30 to 80% more likely to cite each other than inventors from othcr countrics, and these citations come sooner; and (4) there are clear country-specific citation tendencies, e.g...	Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg
8	2002	Are Firms Superior to Alliances and Markets? An Empirical Test of Cross-Border Knowledge Building ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge moves across organizational boundaries and compares firms, alliances, and markets as channels for cross-border technology diffusion. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its evidence on engineers, tacit knowledge, and patent citations is highly relevant to mechanisms of knowledge transfer and innovation spillovers. Are multinational corporations (MNCs) superior to strategic alliances and markets in facilitating the flow of knowledge across borders? If so, what are the sources of this superiority? Despite their central importance to the theory and practice of international management, these questions have not been directly tested. Our paper seeks to address this gap in empirical research. Drawing upon recent research on multinational corporations and the knowledge-based view of the firm, we develop hypotheses regarding the relative superiority of alternative institutional arrangements as regards cross-border knowledge building. Analysis of patent citations by semiconductor companies points to the...	Paul Almeida, Jaeyong Song, Robert M. Grant
8	2014	Patents and Cumulative Innovation: Causal Evidence from the Courts* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patent rights shape cumulative innovation and the diffusion of knowledge through follow-on research, which is central to understanding technology spillovers. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor-market frictions, but its evidence on how legal constraints affect downstream innovation and small-firm entry is highly relevant to the broader project on mechanisms that impede or facilitate knowledge diffusion. Abstract Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede follow-on innovation? We study the causal effect of removing patent rights by court invalidation on subsequent research related to the focal patent, as measured by later citations. We exploit random allocation of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to control for endogeneity of patent invalidation. Patent invalidation leads to a 50% increase in citations to the focal patent, on average, but the impact is heterogeneous and depends on characteristics of the bargaining environment. Patent rights block downstream innovation in computers, electronics, and medical...	Alberto Galasso, Mark Schankerman
8	2008	How do spatial and social proximity influence knowledge flows? Evidence from patent data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor proximity shapes knowledge flows, using patent citations as evidence of technology diffusion. It directly informs the project’s themes of worker/inventor mobility, knowledge spillovers, and how spatial frictions interact with social ties in transmitting ideas across individuals and firms. 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 knowledge flow production function. Our results suggest that although spatial and social proximity both increase the probability of knowledge flows between individuals, the marginal benefit of geographic proximity is greater for inventors who are not socially close. We also report that the marginal benefit of being members of the same technical community of practice is greater in terms of access to...	Ajay Agrawal, Devesh Kapur, John McHale
8	2004	Knowledge flows through informal contacts in industrial clusters: myth or reality? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how engineers transfer valuable knowledge across firms through informal contacts, which is a direct mechanism of worker-mediated technology diffusion. It is not primarily about labor market frictions or policy interventions like non-competes, but it provides empirical evidence on the channels through which mobility-adjacent interactions spread knowledge in clustered industries. The role of informal networks in the development of regional clusters has recently received a lot of attention in the literature. Informal contact between employees in different firms is claimed to be one of the main carriers of knowledge between firms in a cluster. This paper examines empirically the role of informal contacts in a specific cluster. In a questionnaire survey, we asked a sample of engineers in a regional cluster of wireless communication firms in Northern Denmark a series of questions on informal networks. We analyze whether the engineers actually acquire valuable knowledge through these networks. We find that the engineers do share even quite valuable knowledge with...	Michael S. Dahl, Christian Ø. R. Pedersen
8	1989	Chapter 14 The timing of innovation: Research, development, and diffusion ↗ [Title only] This chapter title strongly aligns with the project because it explicitly covers innovation timing, R&D, and diffusion, which are central to understanding how knowledge moves across firms and the economy. Even without explicit mention of labor mobility, it is likely relevant for background on how innovation is generated and spread, though it may focus more on technological diffusion broadly than on worker movement or labor market frictions specifically. No abstract available.	Jennifer F. Reinganum	Other
8	2003	Technology Transfer and Universities' Spin-Out Strategies ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because technology transfer and university spin-outs are direct channels through which knowledge moves from research institutions into firms and the broader economy. It likely speaks to commercialization, inventor mobility, and the formation of new ventures that can spread technology, though it may be more about institutional strategy than labor-market frictions specifically. No abstract available.	Andy Lockett, Mike Wright, Stephen J. Franklin
8	2018	Protection of trade secrets and capital structure decisions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a legal restriction on worker mobility—the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine—affects firms by reducing the ability of employees with proprietary knowledge to move to rivals. While the main outcome is capital structure rather than knowledge diffusion directly, the mechanism is central to the project’s focus on mobility frictions, trade secret protection, and the spillover of worker-held information across firms. Firms strategically choose more conservative capital structures when they face greater competitive threats stemming from the potential loss of their trade secrets to rivals. Following the recognition of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine by US state courts, which exogenously increases the protection of a firm's trade secrets by reducing the mobility of its workers who know its secrets to rivals, the firm increases its leverage relative to unaffected rivals. The effect is stronger for firms with a greater risk of losing key employees to rivals, for those facing financially stronger rivals, and for those in industries where competition is more intense.	Sandy Klasa, Hernán Ortiz‐Molina, Matthew Serfling, et al.
8	2016	Do Unions Affect Innovation? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a labor market institution affects firm innovation, patenting, and inventor behavior, which fits the project’s focus on how worker-related frictions and firm policies shape knowledge creation and diffusion. The mechanism involving departures of innovative inventors and the relocation of innovation activity also speaks to mobility-induced reallocation of inventive activity, though it is more about unions and innovation outcomes than direct worker mobility or spillover diffusion. We examine the effect of unionization on firm innovation, using a regression discontinuity design that relies on “locally” exogenous variation generated by elections that pass or fail by a small margin of votes. Passing a union election results in an 8.7% (12.5%) decline in patent quantity (quality) three years after the election. A reduction in R&D expenditures, reduced productivity of inventors, and departures of innovative inventors appear to be plausible underlying mechanisms through which unionization impedes firm innovation. In response to unionization, firms move their innovation activities away from states where union elections win. Our paper provides new insights into the real...	Daniel Bradley, Incheol Kim, Xuan Tian
8	1992	Matchmaker, Matchmaker: The Effect of Old Boy Networks on Job Match Quality, Earnings, and Tenure ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how referral-based hiring networks affect job match quality, earnings, and tenure, which speaks directly to worker mobility and the matching frictions that shape labor-market sorting. While it does not focus on knowledge diffusion or innovation spillovers per se, its use of scientists and engineers and its emphasis on network-based hiring make it useful for understanding how labor market frictions influence movement and retention of skilled workers. Firms often view job applicant referrals from current employees as more informative than direct applications or referrals through formal labor market intermediaries such as placement firms. The authors argue that old boy networks reduce employers' uncertainty about worker productivity. Using Jovanovic's job matching model, they show that workers hired through the old boy network should (1) earn higher initial salaries, (2) experience lower subsequent wage growth on the job, and (3) stay on the job longer than otherwise comparable workers hired from outside the network. They find considerable support for this theory using data from the 1972 Survey of Natural and Social Scientists and...	Curtis J. Simon, John T. Warner
8	2006	Spin-outs: knowledge diffusion through employee mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it explicitly studies knowledge diffusion through employee mobility and spin-outs, which is central to the project’s focus on how workers transfer technological know-how across firms. It also examines how allowing employees to learn from employers affects firm formation and survival, offering a theoretical mechanism for diffusion and industry dynamics, though it is less directly about labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility policies. In many industries, one important method of diffusion is through employee mobility: many of the entering firms are started by employees from incumbent firms using some of their former employer's technological know-how. This article explores the effect of incorporating this mechanism in a general industry framework by allowing employees to imitate their employers' know-how. The equilibrium is Pareto optimal because the employees “pay” for the possibility of learning their employers' know-how. The model's implications are consistent with data from the rigid disk drive industry. These implications concern the effects of know-how on firm formation and survival.	April Franco, Darren Filson
8	2003	Innovation and Urban Regions as National and International Nodes for the Transfer and Sharing of Knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on knowledge transfer and spillovers across firms and regions, a core mechanism in the project’s study of technology diffusion. However, it emphasizes urban-regional knowledge networks and international linkages more than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or policies like non-competes. S IMMIE J. (2003) Innovation and urban regions as national and international nodes for the transfer and sharing of knowledge, Reg. Studies 37 , 607-620. This paper examines the transfer and sharing of knowledge within and between regions in the context of the development of the international economy. It is argued that knowledge is a key resource for innovation which, in turn, is one of the major drivers of economic growth. The firms producing the most novel product innovations in the most significant regional concentrations of innovation are very adept at working across the interface of local and global knowledge transfers. Using data from previous studies combined with the latest regional...	James Simmie
8	2003	Startup size and the mechanisms of external learning: increasing opportunity and decreasing ability? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies external learning through alliances, worker mobility, and geographic co-location as channels for technology diffusion, which is central to the project’s focus on knowledge spillovers and labor mobility. It is especially relevant for understanding how firm size shapes the use of informal mobility-based learning mechanisms in startup and semiconductor contexts, though it does not directly analyze labor market frictions like non-competes or economy-wide productivity effects. An important area of investigation in the field of entrepreneurship examines how people and organizations exploit technological opportunities. Prior research suggests that alliances, the mobility of experts, and the informal mechanisms associated with geographic co-location can present firms with useful opportunities to source technological knowledge. This paper uses insights from strategic management and organizational theory to suggest that organizational size may have an important impact on the extent of external learning, since it differentially affects the likelihood of learning via formal and informal mechanisms. Examining a cross-section of semiconductor startups, we find that...	Paul Almeida, Gina Dokko, Lori Rosenkopf
8	2006	The network of innovators in Jena: An application of social network analysis ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how job mobility of scientists helps shape an innovation network and predicts R&D cooperation structure, directly tying worker movement to knowledge diffusion. It also emphasizes technological overlap and compares mobility with past collaborations, which speaks to how labor-market frictions and firm interaction affect the formation of innovative linkages. We apply social network analysis methods to describe the evolution of the innovator network of Jena, Germany in the period from 1995 to 2001. We find this evolution to be directed towards an increasing focus on core competencies of the network. Further we analyse the network resulting from R&D cooperations and explain - by means of network regression techniques - that the job mobility of scientists and the technological overlap between the actors, rather than past cooperations, can best predict the resulting structure. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.	Uwe Cantner, Holger Graf
8	2021	Global labor flow network reveals the hierarchical organization and dynamics of geo-industrial clusters This paper is closely related because it studies global labor mobility as a mechanism shaping knowledge and skill diffusion across firms through worker flows. Its focus on educated workers, firm performance, and productivity growth within geo-industrial clusters is highly relevant to understanding how labor market frictions and mobility patterns affect diffusion and innovation, even though it is more descriptive and network-oriented than directly about policy or frictions like non-competes. Groups of firms often achieve a competitive advantage through the formation of geo-industrial clusters. Although many exemplary clusters are the subjects of case studies, systematic approaches to identify and analyze the hierarchical structure of geo-industrial clusters at the global scale are scarce. In this work, we use LinkedIn’s employment history data from more than 500 million users over 25 years to construct a labor flow network of over 4 million firms across the world, from which we reveal hierarchical structure by applying network community detection. We show that the resulting geo-industrial clusters exhibit a stronger association between the influx of educated workers and...	Jaehyuk Park, Ian B. Wood, Elise Jing, et al.
8	2014	Accessing vs sourcing knowledge: A comparative study of R&D internationalization between emerging and advanced economy firms ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly studies how firms internationalize R&D to access or source knowledge, which is directly tied to technology diffusion and cross-border knowledge spillovers. The comparison between emerging and advanced economy firms likely touches on firm strategies, mobility of ideas and talent, and the mechanisms through which knowledge is transferred across organizational and geographic boundaries. No abstract available.	Snehal Awate, Marcus M. Larsen, Ram Mudambi
8	2010	Brain drain or brain bank? The impact of skilled emigration on poor-country innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies skilled worker mobility, inventor emigration, and how diaspora networks transmit knowledge across locations. It directly speaks to technology diffusion and innovation effects of labor mobility, though it is more about international migration than firm-level mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs. The development prospects of a poor country depend in part on its capacity for innovation. The productivity of its innovators depends in turn on their access to technological knowledge. The emigration of highly skilled individuals weakens local knowledge networks (brain drain), but may also help remaining innovators access valuable knowledge accumulated abroad (brain bank). We develop a model in which the size of the optimal innovator diaspora depends on the competing strengths of co-location and diaspora effects for accessing knowledge. Then, using patent citation data associated with inventions from India, we estimate the key co-location and diaspora parameters; the net effect of...	Ajay Agrawal, Devesh Kapur, John McHale, et al.
8	2004	Science and the diffusion of knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a key mechanism of technology diffusion: how publication accelerates the spread of knowledge and raises the impact of patented inventions. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its emphasis on faster diffusion across time and space is directly relevant to understanding how knowledge moves through the economy. Scientists, social scientists and politicians frequently credit basic science with stimulating technological innovation, and with it economic growth. Despite a substantial body of research investigating this general relationship, relatively little empirical attention has been given to understanding the mechanisms that might generate this linkage. This paper considers whether more rapid diffusion of knowledge, brought about by the norm of publication, might account for part of this effect. We identify the importance of publication by comparing the patterns of citations from future patents to three groups of focal patents: (i) those that reference scientific (peer-reviewed) publications, (ii)...	Olav Sorenson, Lee Fleming
8	2008	How does labour mobility affect the performance of plants? The importance of relatedness and geographical proximity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor mobility moves skills into plants and how those inflows affect productivity growth, which is central to worker-mediated knowledge diffusion. It also examines how relatedness and geographical proximity shape the productivity effects of worker moves, aligning well with the project’s focus on the direction and quality of technology transfer through labor market frictions. This article analyses the impact of skill portfolios and labour mobility on plant performance by means of a unique database that connects attributes of individuals to features of plants for the whole Swedish economy. We found that a portfolio of related competences at the plant level increases significantly productivity growth of plants, in contrast to plant portfolios consisting of either similar or unrelated competences. Based on the analysis of 101,093 job moves, we found that inflows of skills that are related to the existing knowledge base of the plant had a positive effect on plant performance, while the inflow of new employees with skills that are already present in the plant had a...	Ron Boschma, Rikard Eriksson, Urban Lindgren
8	2019	Who Profits from Patents? Rent-Sharing at Innovative Firms* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how innovation-generated surplus is shared with workers at innovative firms, directly linking patent shocks to productivity, wages, retention, and rent capture. While it does not focus on worker mobility as the main diffusion channel, its evidence on retention and compensation at innovative firms speaks to how labor market frictions shape the distribution of gains from knowledge creation. This article analyzes how patent-induced shocks to labor productivity propagate into worker compensation using a new linkage of U.S. patent applications to U.S. business and worker tax records. We infer the causal effects of patent allowances by comparing firms whose patent applications were initially allowed to those whose patent applications were initially rejected. To identify patents that are ex ante valuable, we extrapolate the excess stock return estimates of Kogan et al. (2017) to the full set of accepted and rejected patent applications based on predetermined firm and patent application characteristics. An initial allowance of an ex ante valuable patent generates substantial...	Patrick Kline, Neviana Petkova, Heidi Williams, et al.
8	2019	Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the exit of a key knowledge worker changes the direction and intensity of knowledge production within a field, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion and innovation dynamics. Although it focuses on scientific fields rather than firms or labor market frictions, the mechanism of outsider entry after the loss of a star scientist is highly relevant to worker mobility, knowledge spillovers, and the reallocation of expertise. We examine how the premature death of eminent life scientists alters the vitality of their fields. While the flow of articles by collaborators into affected fields decreases after the death of a star scientist, the flow of articles by non-collaborators increases markedly. This surge in contributions from outsiders draws upon a different scientific corpus and is disproportionately likely to be highly cited. While outsiders appear reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge within them.	Pierre Azoulay, Christian Fons‐Rosen, Joshua Graff Zivin
8	2013	Labor Laws and Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market institutions shape innovation incentives and the ability of firms to appropriate returns from employee-generated ideas, which is central to understanding knowledge production and diffusion through workers. While it focuses on dismissal laws rather than worker mobility or non-competes, its mechanisms speak directly to labor market frictions affecting inventive effort, firm behavior, and aggregate innovation outcomes. When contracts are incomplete, dismissal laws prevent employers from arbitrarily discharging employees and thereby limit employers’ ability to hold up innovating employees after an innovation is successful. Therefore, dismissal laws can enhance employees’ innovative efforts and encourage firms to invest in risky but potentially groundbreaking projects. Other forms of labor laws that do not affect dismissal of employees do not have this bright side. We find support for these predictions in empirical tests that exploit country-level changes in dismissal laws in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany: more stringent dismissal laws foster innovation, particularly in...	Viral V. Acharya, Ramin Baghai, Krishnamurthy Subramanian
8	2008	Human capital, graduate migration and innovation in British regions ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how the migration of high-quality graduates across regions affects innovation performance, which is directly aligned with worker mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion. Its focus on labor market characteristics, knowledge characteristics, and two-way causality between human-capital flows and regional innovation makes it useful for understanding how mobility influences diffusion and productivity, even though it is about graduate migration rather than inventor mobility or non-compete policies. With the aid of a geographical information system, our paper constructs a three stage least squares simultaneous equation model to investigate the interrelationships between the interregional flows of human capital, and the innovation dynamism of a region. In order to do this, we model the interregional migration behaviour of high quality British university graduates from university into first employment, and we relate these human capital flows to both the labour market characteristics and the knowledge characteristics of the employment regions. This is done for all industries and separately for just high technology industries. Our results indicate that for England and Wales there is a...	Alessandra Faggian, Philip McCann
8	2012	The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the international mobility of highly skilled workers changes knowledge production, productivity, and the allocation of talent across institutions. It is especially relevant to your project’s focus on worker movement as a channel of technology and knowledge diffusion, though it is more about academic competition and productivity spillovers than labor market frictions like non-competes or hiring policy. Abstract It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large, post-1992 influx of Soviet mathematicians on the productivity of their U.S. counterparts. We find a negative productivity effect on those mathematicians whose research overlapped with that of the Soviets. We also document an increased mobility rate (to lower quality institutions and out of active publishing) and a reduced likelihood of producing “home run” papers. Although the total product of the preexisting American mathematicians shrank, the Soviet contribution to American...	George J. Borjas, Kirk Doran
8	1999	Is geographical proximity necessary in the innovation networks in the era of global economy? ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns innovation networks and whether geographical proximity still matters for knowledge transmission, which is central to technology diffusion and spillovers. It likely speaks to how distance affects collaboration and information flow, though it may be more about firms and networks broadly than worker mobility specifically. No abstract available.	Alain Rallet, André Torre
8	2001	Knowledge codification and the geography of innovation: the case of Brescia mechanical cluster ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge circulates through networks of engineers and firms within an industrial cluster, which speaks directly to mechanisms of technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its emphasis on codified knowledge, firm-specific expertise, and engineer-centered epistemic communities is highly relevant to understanding how knowledge moves across firms. The paper re-examines the twin concepts of knowledge "tacitness" and "codification", which both the literature on (broadly defined) industrial districts, and some recent econometric literature on "localized knowledge spillovers" have possibly mis-handled. Even within specialized local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) clusters, knowledge may be highly codified and firm-specific. The case study on Brescia mechanical firms shows that knowledge, rather than flowing freely within the cluster boundaries, circulates within a few smaller "epistemic communities", each centered around the mechanical engineers of individual machine producers, and spanning to a selected number of suppliers' and...	Francesco Lissoni
8	2013	Technological Relatedness and Knowledge Space: Entry and Exit of US Cities from Patent Classes ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge diffuses across technological fields and how cities enter or exit patent classes based on a knowledge network built from citation linkages. Although it does not directly analyze worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides important evidence on the geography and structure of technological diffusion that is central to the project. U.S. patent and citation data are used to measure technological relatedness between major patent classes in the USPTO. The technological relatedness measures, constructed as the probability that a patent in class j will cite a patent in class i, form the links of a knowledge network. Changes in this knowledge network are examined from 1975 to 2005. Evolution of the patent knowledge base within U.S. metropolitan areas is tracked by combining the knowledge network with annual patent data for each city. Entries and exits of cities from patent classes are linked to local and non-local measures of technological relatedness. knowledge space technological relatedness patents citations entry exit	David L. Rigby
8	2015	STEM Workers, H-1B Visas, and Productivity in US Cities ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the inflow of skilled STEM workers through H-1B visas affects productivity growth and wage outcomes, which is directly relevant to knowledge diffusion and innovation. It is somewhat less central than papers on worker mobility frictions or inventor movement within firms, but it provides strong evidence on the aggregate productivity effects of facilitating skilled labor mobility across cities. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers are fundamental inputs for innovation, the main driver of productivity growth. We identify the long-run effect of STEM employment growth on outcomes for native workers across 219 US cities from 1990 to 2010. We use the 1980 distribution of foreign-born STEM workers and variation in the H-1B visa program to identify supply-driven STEM increases across cities. Increases in STEM workers are associated with significant wage gains for college-educated natives. Gains for non-college-educated natives are smaller but still significant. Our results imply that foreign STEM increased total factor productivity growth in US cities.	Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih, Chad Sparber
8	2017	The Effect of State Taxes on the Geographical Location of Top Earners: Evidence from Star Scientists ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how tax-driven frictions shape the geographic mobility of highly innovative workers, specifically star scientists. Its evidence on how personal and corporate taxes affect migration and firm location directly informs how labor market and policy frictions influence the diffusion of knowledge and innovation across places. We quantify how sensitive is migration by star scientists to changes in personal and business tax differentials across states. We uncover large, stable, and precisely estimated effects of personal and corporate taxes on star scientists' migration patterns. The long-run elasticity of mobility relative to taxes is 1.8 for personal income taxes, 1.9 for state corporate income tax, and −1.7 for the investment tax credit. While there are many other factors that drive when innovative individuals and innovative companies decide to locate, there are enough firms and workers on the margin that state taxes matter. (JEL H24, H25, H71, H73, J44, J61, R32)	Enrico Moretti, Daniel J. Wilson
8	2008	Does it matter where patent citations come from? Inventor vs. examiner citations in European patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies patent citations as indicators of technology flows and directly examines how geographic distance affects knowledge diffusion, which is central to the project. Its focus on inventor versus examiner citations also speaks to measurement issues in tracking worker- and firm-level knowledge spillovers, though it does not directly analyze labor mobility or non-compete frictions. This paper addresses the question of whether patent citations are useful indicators of technology flows. We exploit the distinction between citations added by inventors and patent examiners. We use information from the search reports of European Patent Office patent examiners to construct our dataset of patenting activity in Europe and the US, and apply various econometric models to investigate what determines the probability that a citation is added by the inventor rather than the examiner. Contrary to previous work which uses US Patent and Trademark Office data, we find that geographical distance is a factor that strongly diminishes the probability of knowledge flows. We find other...	Paola Criscuolo, Bart Verspagen
8	2016	Roads and Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how infrastructure affects innovation through local knowledge flows, which is directly relevant to mechanisms of technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers. However, it focuses on transportation networks rather than worker mobility frictions or labor market policies, so it is adjacent to but not centered on the project’s main question. We exploit historical data on planned highways, railroads, and exploration routes as sources of exogenous variation in order to estimate the effect of interstate highways on regional innovation: a 10% increase in a region's stock of highways causes a 1.7% increase in regional patenting over a five-year period. In terms of the mechanism, we report evidence that roads facilitate local knowledge flows, increasing the likelihood that innovators access knowledge inputs from local but more distant neighbors. Thus, transportation infrastructure may spur regional growth above and beyond the more commonly discussed agglomeration economies predicated on an inflow of new workers.	Ajay Agrawal, Alberto Galasso, Alexander Oettl
8	2001	Was an Industrial Revolution Inevitable? Economic Growth Over the Very Long Run ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies long-run growth, innovation incentives, and institutions that affect the production of ideas, all of which are central to understanding knowledge creation and diffusion. However, it focuses more on aggregate growth and inventor compensation than on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-to-firm technology transfer. This paper studies a growth model that is able to match several key facts of economic history. For thousands of years, the average standard of living seems to have risen very little, despite increases in the level of technology and large increases in the level of the population. Then, after thousands of years of little change, the level of per capita consumption increased dramatically in less than two centuries. Quantitative analysis of the model highlights two factors central to understanding this history. The first is a virtuous circle: more people produce more ideas, which in turn makes additional population growth possible. The second is an improvement in institutions that promote...	Charles I. Jones
8	2009	Should auld acquaintance be forgot? the reverse transfer of knowledge through mobility ties ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility creates knowledge spillovers across firms, which is central to the project’s focus on technology diffusion through labor movement. Its main contribution is showing bidirectional and reverse knowledge transfer from outbound mobility ties, with evidence from semiconductor firms and patent citations, though it is more about spillovers than about labor market frictions or policy effects. Abstract While mobility's effect on knowledge transfer to firms that hire mobile employees is well demonstrated, we choose to explore mobility's effect on knowledge transfer to firms that lose these employees. Focusing on this ‘outbound mobility’ allows us to isolate effects of social mechanisms associated with mobility. We find that semiconductor firms losing employees are more likely to subsequently cite patents of firms hiring these employees, suggesting that mobility‐driven knowledge flows are bidirectional. In addition, the outbound mobility effect is pronounced when mobility occurs between geographically distant firms, but attenuates for geographically proximate firms since other...	Rafael A. Corredoira, Lori Rosenkopf
8	2005	Labour pooling, labour poaching, and spatial clustering ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility across nearby firms creates knowledge spillovers through labor pooling and poaching, directly matching the project’s focus on labor market frictions and knowledge diffusion. Its duopoly model of firm location, wages, and retention also speaks to how firms’ hiring and compensation choices interact with spatial clustering and the movement of knowledgeable workers. When firms cluster in the same local labour market, they face a trade-off between the benefits of labour pooling (i.e., access to workers whose knowledge help reduce costs) and the costs of labour poaching (i.e., loss of some key workers to competition and a higher wage bill to retain the others). We explore this tradeoff in a duopoly game. Depending on market size, on the degree of horizontal differentiation between goods, and on worker heterogeneity in terms of knowledge transfer cost, we characterise the strategic choices of firms regarding locations, wages, poaching and prices. Our results show that co-location, although it is always efficient in our framework, is not in general the...	Pierre‐Philippe Combes, Gilles Duranton
8	2012	Spreading the Word: Geography, Policy, and Knowledge Spillovers ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how geography and state policies shape knowledge spillovers from universities, including patent citations and scientific publications. Its findings on noncompete laws, interstate scientific labor mobility, and policy reforms speak directly to how labor market frictions affect the diffusion of knowledge and technology. Using new data on citations to university patents and scientific publications, we study how geography affects university knowledge spillovers. Citations to patents decline sharply with distance and are strongly constrained by state borders. The effect of distance on citations to scientific publications is less sharp, and the state border effect on publications is significant only for lower-quality public universities. We show that the state border effect is heterogeneous and strongly influenced by university and state characteristics and policies. It is larger for universities that are public and that have strong local development policies, and in states with strong noncompete labor laws...	Sharon Belenzon, Mark Schankerman
8	1998	Patent Breadth, Patent Life, and the Pace of Technological Progress ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patent breadth and effective patent life shape the pace of technological progress through sequential innovation and product replacement. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it speaks to the broader diffusion of knowledge and innovation incentives that are central to the project. In active investment climates where firms sequentially improve each other's products, a patent can terminate either because it expires or because a non‐infringing innovation displaces its product in the market. We define the length of time until one of these happens as the effective patent life, and show how it depends on patent breadth. We distinguish lagging breadth, which protects against imitation, from leading breadth, which protects against new improved products. We compare two types of patent policy with leading breadth: (1) patents are finite but very broad, so that the effective life of a patent coincides with its statutory life, and (2) patents are long but narrow, so that the...	Ted O’Donoghue, Suzanne Scotchmer, Jacques‐François Thisse
8	2021	Knowledge Spillovers and Corporate Investment in Scientific Research ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers from firms’ scientific research and how those spillovers affect corporate R&D and investment incentives. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on diffusion mechanisms and firm responses to spillovers, though it does not center on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or non-compete policies. Using data on 800,000 corporate publications and patent citations to these publications between 1980 and 2015, we study how corporate investment in research is linked to its use in the firm’s inventions, and to spillovers to rivals. We find that private returns to corporate research depend on the balance between two opposing forces: the benefits from the use of science in own downstream inventions, and the costs of spillovers to rivals. Consistent with this, firms produce more research when it is used internally, but less research when it is used by rivals. As firms become more sensitive to rivals using their science, they are likely to reduce the share of research in R&D. (JEL D22, D25...	Ashish Arora, Sharon Belenzon, Sheer Lia
8	1995	Licensing Tacit Knowledge: Intellectual Property Rights And The Market For Know-How ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how tacit knowledge and know-how are transferred in technology markets, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion across firms. While it focuses on licensing contracts and intellectual property rights rather than worker mobility, it offers important insight into how institutional frictions shape the transfer of non-codified knowledge and the efficiency of technology diffusion. Technology transfer involves more than just the permission to use knowledge covered by patents; the transfer of know-how is critical to the successful utilization of the transferred technology. However, know-how is typically difficult to codify, costly to transfer, and hence, difficult to contract upon. Using a principal-agent model I show that simple arms length contracts can accomplish the transfer know-how. The key to the success of arms length contracts is the complementarity between know-how and patents. The model explains why patents and know-how are bundled together in licensing contracts. It shows why licensing has limitations as a strategy for appropriating rents from innovation...	Ashish Arora
8	2006	Entrepreneurship, Geography, and American Economic Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurship, and regional firm formation as channels through which ideas diffuse and economic growth occurs. It is somewhat less direct than the core topic because it does not focus specifically on worker mobility, non-compete enforcement, or labor market frictions, but it does speak to how knowledge moves across firms and industries. The spillovers in knowledge among largely college-educated workers were among the key reasons for the impressive degree of economic growth and spread of entrepreneurship in the United States during the 1990s. Prior 'industrial policies' in the 1970s and 1980s did not advance growth because these were based on outmoded large manufacturing models. Zoltan Acs and Catherine Armington use a knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to explain new firm formation rates in regional economies during the 1990s period and beyond. The fastest-growing regions are those that have the highest rates of new firm formation, and which are not dominated by large businesses. The authors of this text also...	Zoltán J. Ács, Catherine Armington
8	2010	Migration and innovation: Does cultural diversity matter for regional R&D activity? ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it links migration directly to innovation and regional R&D activity, which is central to how worker movement can affect knowledge diffusion and productivity. The emphasis on cultural diversity suggests an indirect channel of spillovers rather than labor-market frictions like non-competes, so it is related but not perfectly aligned with the project’s core mechanism. No abstract available.	Annekatrin Niebuhr
8	2012	Lens or Prism? Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows from Public Research ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge flows from public research are transmitted to firms and how patent citations capture or miss those spillovers. Its focus on measurement error in citations, codified versus private knowledge flows, and the impact on innovative performance is directly useful for research on technology diffusion and knowledge transfer, though it does not center on worker mobility or labor market frictions. This paper assesses the validity and accuracy of firms' backward patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows from public research by employing a newly constructed dataset that matches patents to survey data at the level of the R&D lab. Using survey-based measures of the dimensions of knowledge flows, we identify sources of systematic measurement error associated with backward citations to both patent and nonpatent references. We find that patent citations reflect the codified knowledge flows from public research, but they appear to miss knowledge flows that are more private and contract-based in nature, as well as those used in firm basic research. We also find that firms' patenting...	Michael Roach, Wesley M. Cohen
8	2012	Knowledge Recombination Across Technological Boundaries: Scientists vs. Engineers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors, patenting, and how individual characteristics shape the breadth of technological knowledge recombination, which is central to understanding how knowledge diffuses through worker mobility and innovation. However, it focuses more on education and recombination patterns than on labor market frictions, mobility policies, or firm-level mechanisms of worker movement. Building on the seminal work of Thomas J. Allen, we contribute to the emerging microlevel theory of knowledge recombination by examining how individual-level characteristics of inventors affect the breadth of their technological recombinations. Our data set combines information from 30,550 European patents with matched survey data obtained from 1,880 inventors. The analysis supports the view that inventors with a scientific education are more likely to generate patents that span technological boundaries (in our case, 30 broad, top-level technological domains) than inventors with an engineering degree. A doctoral degree is associated with increased recombination breadth for all groups of...	Marc Gruber, Dietmar Harhoff, Karin Hoisl
8	2005	Is Mobility of Technical Personnel a Source of R&D Spillovers? ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies mobility of technical personnel as a mechanism for R&D spillovers and knowledge transfer across firms. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on how labor markets internalize or shape knowledge externalities, though it emphasizes wage dynamics and human capital rather than policy frictions like non-competes or search costs. Labor mobility is considered to be an important source of knowledge externalities, making it difficult for firms to appropriate returns to research and development (R&D). Interfirm transfers of knowledge embodied in people should be analyzed within a human capital framework. Testing such a framework, I find that the technical staff in R&D‐intensive firms pays for the knowledge they accumulate on the job through lower wages early in their career. They later earn a return on these implicit investments through higher wages. This suggests that the potential externalities associated with labor mobility are, at least partially, internalized in the labor market.	Jarle Møen
8	2008	Neighborhood matters: The impact of location on broad based stock option plans ↗ This paper is closely related because it links firm compensation policies to local labor market conditions and explicitly studies non-compete enforcement, a key labor-market friction in worker mobility. It is more about how location and labor market structure shape the use of stock options than about knowledge diffusion itself, but it is still highly relevant for understanding how mobility constraints affect firm behavior. We find that fixed effects related to the location of firms' headquarters explain variation in broad based option grants after controlling for industry effects and firm characteristics traditionally known to affect option granting. Location matters because of local labor market conditions and social interaction with neighboring firms. Broad based option grants are higher: (i) when a firm's stock prices co-move more with stock prices of other firms located in that Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA); (ii) in states that are less likely to enforce non-compete agreements; and (iii) in MSAs where employees prefer options because stocks there experience abnormally high returns. © 2009 Elsevier...	Simi Kedia, Shiva Rajgopal
8	2011	Physical attraction and the geography of knowledge sourcing in multinational enterprises ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge moves through local firm networks and how industrial concentration affects access to and diffusion of knowledge, which is central to the project’s interest in technology spillovers. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it provides useful evidence on the geography of knowledge sourcing and the conditions under which firms can or cannot tap local knowledge stocks. Abstract In this article, we develop the concept of the degree of physical attraction exerted by the dominant firms in a local industry on other actors that increases the ease of local knowledge search for ‘insiders’ with stronger connections to others. Conversely, the physical attraction of dominant firms on other actors raises the difficulty of local knowledge search for ‘outsiders’ with weaker connections to others. Our theory has important implications for knowledge spillovers. As local industry concentration rises, the likelihood of local knowledge spillovers to outsiders falls, even with a high local knowledge stock. Further, in contrast to the strategic deterrence thesis which posits...	John Cantwell, Ram Mudambi
8	2007	How do technology clusters emerge and become sustainable? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor mobility among skilled workers and managers creates social networks that connect firms and support technology diffusion within a regional cluster. It is relevant to the project’s core themes of worker movement, knowledge spillovers, and the emergence of innovation ecosystems, though it focuses more on cluster formation than on policy frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. Regional technology clusters are an important source of economic development, yet in biotechnology few successful clusters exist. Previous research links successful clusters to heightened innovation capacity achieved through the existence of social ties linking individuals across companies. Less understood are the mechanisms by which such networks emerge. The article uses social network analysis to examine the emergence of social networks linking senior managers employed in biotechnology firms in San Diego, California. Labor mobility within the region has forged a large network linking managers and firms, while ties linking managers of an early company, Hybritech, formed a network backbone...	Steven Casper
8	2012	Reconceptualizing Stars: Scientist Helpfulness and Peer Performance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how scientists’ interactions with peers affect coauthors’ productivity and output quality, which speaks directly to knowledge diffusion through worker mobility and collaboration. Although it does not focus on labor market frictions like non-competes or hiring policies, it provides evidence on the social transmission of ideas and the importance of skilled workers as vehicles for performance spillovers. It is surprising that the prevailing performance taxonomy for scientists (star versus nonstar) focuses only on individual output and ignores social behavior, because innovation is often characterized as a communal process. To develop a deeper understanding of the mechanisms by which scientists influence the productivity of others, I expand the traditional taxonomy of scientists that focuses solely on productivity and add a second, social dimension: helpfulness to others. Using a combination of academic paper publications and citations to capture scientist productivity and the receipt of academic paper acknowledgments to measure helpfulness, I examine the change in publishing output of the...	Alexander Oettl
8	2008	The Contribution of International Graduate Students to US Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the inflow of skilled foreign graduate students affects innovation outcomes, which is a direct channel of knowledge creation and diffusion. While it does not focus on worker mobility across firms or labor market frictions like non-competes, it is highly relevant to the broader question of how policies affecting skilled labor movement influence aggregate innovation. Abstract The impact of international students in the United States on innovative activity is estimated using a model of idea generation. Results indicate that the presence of foreign graduate students has a significant and positive impact on both future patent applications and future patents awarded to university and non‐university institutions. Our central estimates suggest that a 10% increase in the number of foreign graduate students would raise patent applications by 4.5%, university patent grants by 6.8% and non‐university patent grants by 5.0%. Thus, reductions in foreign graduate students from visa restrictions could significantly reduce US innovative activity. Increases in skilled...	Gnanaraj Chellaraj, Keith E. Maskus, Aaditya Mattoo
8	2019	What Is a Patent Worth? Evidence from the U.S. Patent “Lottery” ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how obtaining patent rights affects startup growth and subsequent innovation, which is central to understanding knowledge creation and diffusion through inventive activity. While it does not directly analyze worker mobility or labor market frictions, its evidence on follow-on innovation and financing channels is useful background for how firms accumulate and spread technological capabilities. ABSTRACT We provide evidence on the value of patents to startups by leveraging the quasi‐random assignment of applications to examiners with different propensities to grant patents. Using unique data on all first‐time applications filed at the U.S. Patent Office since 2001, we find that startups that win the patent “lottery” by drawing lenient examiners have, on average, 55% higher employment growth and 80% higher sales growth five years later. Patent winners also pursue more, and higher quality, follow‐on innovation. Winning a first patent boosts a startup’s subsequent growth and innovation by facilitating access to funding from venture capitalists, banks, and public investors.	Joan Farre-Mensa, Deepak Hegde, Alexander Ljungqvist
8	2008	US faculty patenting: Inside and outside the university ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how academic inventors move knowledge between universities and firms through patenting and consulting, which is a direct channel of technology diffusion via worker mobility and outside employment. It also touches on institutional frictions and incentives—such as university policy and revenue sharing—that shape whether knowledge is transferred inside or outside the university, although it is less focused on labor market mobility broadly or aggregate productivity effects. In a sample of 5811 patents with US faculty as inventors, 26% are assigned solely to firms rather than universities as dictated by US university employment policies and Bayh-Dole. We relate assignment to patent characteristics, university policy, and inventor field. Patents assigned to firms (whether established or start-ups with inventor as principal) are less basic than those assigned to universities suggesting firm assigned patents result from faculty consulting. Assignment to inventor-related start-ups is less likely the higher the share of revenue inventors receive from university-licensed patents. Firm assignment also varies by inventor field and whether the university is public or...	Jerry G. Thursby, Anne W. Fuller, Marie Thursby
8	2006	Patent Citations and the Geography of Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from Inventor- and Examiner-added Citations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge spillovers diffuse across geography, which is central to understanding how worker and inventor mobility may transmit technology across firms and regions. While it does not focus on labor market frictions or policy constraints like non-competes, its evidence on localized inventor-driven spillovers provides useful context for the channels through which mobile workers may spread knowledge. I report new evidence for localized knowledge spillovers identified by within-patent variations in the geographic matching rates of citations added by inventors and citations added by examiners. Evaluated at the mean citation lag, inventor citations are 20 percent more likely than examiner citations to match the country of origin of their citing patent, while US inventor citations are 25 percent more likely to match the state or metropolitan area of their citing patent. The localization of intranational knowledge spillovers declines with the passage of time, but international borders present a persistent barrier to spillovers.	Peter Thompson
8	2012	Knowledge Transfers from Multinational to Domestic Firms: Evidence from Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for technology and knowledge transfer from multinational to domestic firms, which is central to the project’s focus on diffusion through labor movement. It also speaks to heterogeneity by skill and the effects on wages and spillovers within firms, though it is more about empirical wage spillovers than about mobility frictions, policy restrictions, or aggregate growth effects. Labor turnover is a commonly cited mechanism for the transmission of technology from multinational to domestic firms. Using a matched establishment-worker database from Brazil, I present evidence consistent with positive multinational wage spillovers through worker mobility. When workers leave multinationals and are rehired at domestic establishments, continuing-workers' wages increase. To my knowledge, this avenue for wage spillovers has not previously been explored. The paper also investigates where spillovers occur and how they are absorbed to demonstrate heterogeneous impacts. Higher-skilled former multinational workers are better able to transfer information, and higher-skilled...	Jennifer P. Poole
8	2021	The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility and shows that moving into high-tech clusters raises both the quantity and quality of patents, which speaks directly to how worker movement affects knowledge creation and diffusion. It is also relevant to the project’s aggregate productivity and innovation questions, though it focuses more on agglomeration externalities than on labor market frictions such as non-competes or search costs. The high-tech sector is concentrated in a small number of cities. The ten largest clusters in computer science, semiconductors, and biology account for 69 percent, 77 percent, and 59 percent of all US inventors, respectively. Using longitudinal data on 109,846 inventors, I find that geographical agglomeration results in significant productivity gains. When an inventor moves to a city with a large cluster of inventors in the same field, she experiences a sizable increase in the number and quality of patents produced. The presence of significant productivity externalities implies that the agglomeration of inventors generates large gains in the aggregate amount of innovation produced in the...	Enrico Moretti
8	2007	Death Hurts, But It Isn't Fatal: The Postexit Diffusion of Knowledge Created by Innovative Companies ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge diffuses across firms after an innovative company exits, which is central to understanding technology spillovers and the persistence of firm-created know-how. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its emphasis on interfirm knowledge transfer, knowledge stickiness, and the conditions under which knowledge can be replicated is highly relevant to diffusion and growth mechanisms. There is little understanding of whether a firm's innovative knowledge dies with it or if instead significant diffusion of knowledge occurs even after a firm exits an industry. Theoretical predictions about the differing effects of firm exit on private and public knowledge and implications for interfirm knowledge transfer are forwarded. We investigated main and moderating effects of a firm's exit from the disk drive industry on knowledge diffusion to other firms, finding evidence that the ability to use a firm as a template plays a critical role in successfully replicating its knowledge. Absent this template, knowledge “stickiness” reduces knowledge diffusion.	Glenn Hoetker, Rajshree Agarwal
8	2003	Patent citations and international knowledge flow: the cases of Korea and Taiwan ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion across countries using patent citations, which is central to understanding how ideas spread through inventive activity. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its analysis of technology proximity, diffusion timing, and inventor learning provides useful context for the broader mechanism of knowledge transfer. This paper examines patterns of knowledge diffusion from the U.S. and Japan to Korea and Taiwan using patent citations as an indicator of knowledge flow. We estimate a knowledge diffusion model using a data set of all patents granted in the U.S. to inventors residing in these four countries. Explicitly modeling the roles of technology proximity and knowledge decay and diffusion over time, we find that it is much more likely for Korean patents to cite Japanese patents than U.S. patents, whereas Taiwanese inventors tend to learn evenly from both. We also find that both Korea and Taiwan are surprisingly reliant on relatively recent technology. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V.	Albert G.Z. Hu, Adam B. Jaffe
8	2007	Determinants of cross-national knowledge transfer and its effect on firm innovation ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies cross-national knowledge transfer and its effect on firm innovation, which aligns closely with technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers. It may be somewhat less direct on labor-market frictions or worker mobility specifically, but it likely speaks to the broader mechanism of how knowledge moves across firms and affects innovation. No abstract available.	Masaaki Kotabe, Denise Dunlap‐Hinkler, Ronaldo Parente, et al.
8	1994	The Analysis of Interfirm Worker Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interfirm worker mobility directly and provides evidence on job-changing patterns that are central to understanding how workers move across firms. While it does not focus specifically on knowledge diffusion, non-competes, or innovation outcomes, its findings are useful for modeling mobility frictions and turnover in labor markets that may transmit technology and skills. I use a large sample of jobs from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine job mobility patterns and to evaluate theories of interfirm worker mobility There are three main findings. First, the monthly hazard of job ending is not monotonically decreasing in tenure as most earlier work using annual data has found, but it increases to a maximum at 3 months and declines thereafter. Second, mobility is strongly positively related to the frequency of job change prior to the start of the job. Finally, job change in the most recent year prior to the start of the job is more strongly related than earlier job change to mobility on the current job. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago...	Henry S. Farber
8	2003	Equilibrium Wage-Tenure Contracts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a labor market matching model with on-the-job search, job-to-job transitions, and equilibrium wage-tenure contracts, all of which are central to understanding worker mobility and firm hiring dynamics. While it does not directly model technology diffusion or non-compete policy, its framework is useful for analyzing how labor market frictions and mobility shape wage growth and the movement of workers across firms, which can be a conduit for knowledge transfer. In this study we consider a labor market matching model where firms post wage-tenure contracts and workers, both employed and unemployed, search for new job opportunities. Given workers are risk averse, we establish there is a unique equilibrium in the environment considered. Although firms in the market make different offers in equilibrium, all post a wage-tenure contract that implies a worker's wage increases smoothly with tenure at the firm. As firms make different offers, there is job turnover, as employed workers move jobs as the opportunity arises. This implies the increase in a worker's wage can be due to job-to-job movements as well as wage-tenure effects. Further, there is a...	Ken Burdett, Melvyn Coles
8	2019	A Distributional Framework for Matched Employer Employee Data ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies matched employer-employee data, endogenous mobility, and the interaction between workers and firms, all of which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape worker movement and knowledge diffusion. While it is primarily about earnings distributions and sorting rather than technology transfer per se, its dynamic model of mobility and employer effects provides useful tools and evidence for analyzing how worker movement transmits information across firms. We propose a framework to identify and estimate earnings distributions and worker composition on matched panel data, allowing for two‐sided worker‐firm unobserved heterogeneity and complementarities in earnings. We introduce two models: a static model that allows for nonlinear interactions between workers and firms, and a dynamic model that allows, in addition, for Markovian earnings dynamics and endogenous mobility. We show that this framework nests a number of structural models of wages and worker mobility. We establish identification in short panels, and develop tractable two‐step estimators where firms are classified in a first step. Applying our method to Swedish administrative data...	Stéphane Bonhomme, Thibaut Lamadon, Elena Manresa
8	2010	Is Labor Mobility a Channel for Spillovers from Multinationals? Evidence from Norwegian Manufacturing ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor mobility as a channel for knowledge spillovers, directly matching the project’s focus on worker movement diffusing technology across firms. Its evidence on productivity gains from hiring workers with multinational experience and on a knowledge externality from mobility is highly relevant for understanding the aggregate and firm-level effects of worker flows, though it does not center on policy frictions like non-competes or search frictions. Does hiring workers with experience from multinationals (MNEs) increase productivity in non-MNEs? Tracing worker flows between plants in Norwegian manufacturing during the 1990s, I find a positive correlation between the share of workers with MNE experience in non-MNEs and the productivity of these plants. Workers with MNE experience contribute 20% more to the productivity of their plant than workers without such experience, even after controlling for differences in unobservable worker characteristics. The private return to mobility is smaller than the productivity effect at the plant level, which suggests that labor mobility from MNEs to non-MNEs represents a true knowledge externality.	Ragnhild Balsvik
8	1998	Competence and contract in the theory of the firm ↗ This paper is closely related because it links firm boundaries to organizational learning, cultural transmission, and human learning within firms, all of which are central to understanding how knowledge is created and diffused through worker movement and firm interactions. Although it is more about the theory of the firm than labor mobility specifically, its emphasis on competence, non-contractibility, and internal knowledge transfer provides useful conceptual background for studying frictions that shape knowledge diffusion and productivity. The Coase-Williamson response to the question "why do firms exist?" is based on the idea that transaction costs in viable firms are lower than they would be if production was coordinated through the market. The explanatory focus of this argument is on the diminution of costs related to transactions between given individuals. However, this ignores the possibility of activities which are in principle non-contractible, including aspects of the process of production. Further, the reliance on comparative statics in transaction cost theory downplays the distinctive kind and rate of human learning that takes place within firms. This paper argues that work on organizational learning and cultural...	Geoffrey M. Hodgson
8	2013	Openness and income: The roles of trade and migration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor mobility through immigration as a channel for productivity and innovation, which is central to understanding how movement of people diffuses knowledge and raises output. It is not specifically about firm-level worker mobility, non-competes, or hiring frictions, but its focus on migration-driven TFP gains and innovation makes it highly relevant background for the project. This paper explores the relationship between openness to trade, immigration, and income per person across countries. To address endogeneity concerns we extend the instrumental-variables strategy introduced by Frankel and Romer (1999). We build predictors of openness to immigration and to trade for each country by using information on bilateral geographical and cultural distance (while controlling for country size). Since geography may affect income through other channels, we also control for climate, disease environment, natural resources, and colonial origins. Most importantly, we also account for the roles of institutions and early development. Our instrumental-variables estimates provide...	Francesc Ortega, Giovanni Peri
8	2006	How Special Is the Special Relationship? Using the Impact of U.S. R&D Spillovers on U.K. Firms as a Test of Technology Sourcing ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor location and cross-border R&D exposure transmit knowledge spillovers to firms, which is central to technology diffusion through worker/inventor mobility. Its main focus is on foreign research presence as a conduit for U.S. spillovers rather than labor-market frictions or policies like non-competes, but it is highly relevant for understanding how mobile skilled workers facilitate diffusion and productivity gains. We examine the “technology sourcing” hypothesis that foreign research labs located in the U.S. tap into U.S. R&D spillovers and improve home country productivity. We show that U.K. firms that established a high proportion of inventors based in the U.S. by 1990 benefited disproportionately from the growth of U.S. R&D stock over the next ten years. We estimate that U.S. R&D during the 1990s was associated with 5 percent higher Total Factor Productivity for U.K. manufacturing firms in 2000 (about $13 billion), with the majority of benefits accruing to firms with an innovative presence in the U.S.	Rachel Griffith, Rupert Harrison, John Van Reenen
8	2019	A Spatial Knowledge Economy ↗ This paper is closely related because it models costly idea exchange as the key agglomeration force, which directly speaks to how knowledge diffuses across locations through interaction and mobility. It is especially relevant for understanding how frictions in exchanging ideas shape spatial sorting of skilled workers and skill premia, though it is less directly focused on labor market institutions like non-competes or firm-level hiring policies. Leading empiricists and theorists of cities have recently argued that the generation and exchange of ideas must play a more central role in the analysis of cities. This paper develops the first system of cities model with costly idea exchange as the agglomeration force. The model replicates a broad set of established facts about the cross section of cities. It provides the first spatial equilibrium theory of why skill premia are higher in larger cities and how variation in these premia emerges from symmetric fundamentals. (JEL J24, J31, O31, R12, R23)	Donald R. Davis, Jonathan I. Dingel
8	2007	Social distance versus spatial distance in R&D cooperation: Empirical evidence from European collaboration choices in micro and nanotechnologies ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it studies R&D cooperation and collaboration choices in micro and nanotechnologies, which are central to how knowledge and technology diffuse across firms and researchers. The explicit comparison of social distance versus spatial distance also fits the project’s interest in frictions and networks that shape worker and knowledge mobility, though it may focus more on collaboration than direct worker movement. No abstract available.	Corinne Autant‐Bernard, Pascal Billand, David Frachisse, et al.
8	1995	Start-ups, Spin-offs, and Internal Projects ↗ This paper is closely related because it examines how firms choose between internal development and spin-offs/start-ups, which is directly tied to the movement of ideas and human capital across organizational boundaries. It is especially relevant for understanding how firm structure and employee entrepreneurship affect knowledge diffusion, innovation, and the allocation of inventive activity, though it is less directly focused on labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions. Start-ups, Spin-offs, and Internal Projects James J. Anton, James J. Anton Fuqua School of Business, Duke University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Dennis A. Yao Dennis A. Yao U. S. Federal Trade Commission and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Volume 11, Issue 2, October 1995, Pages 362–378, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jleo.a036876 Published: 01 October 1995	James J. Anton, Dennis A. Yao
8	2015	Do inventors talk to strangers? On proximity and collaborative knowledge creation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor collaboration and how different proximities shape co-patenting and knowledge creation, which is central to understanding how worker mobility and networks diffuse technology across firms. It is especially relevant for the project’s themes of inventor mobility, social connections, and the role of frictions in facilitating or limiting the formation of innovation networks, though it is more about collaboration patterns than labor-market policy per se. This paper examines the characteristics of the collaborations between inventors in the United Kingdom (UK) by looking at what types of proximities – geographic, organisational, cognitive, social, and cultural–ethnic – between inventors are prevalent in partnerships that ultimately lead to technological progress. Using a new panel of UK inventors this paper provides an analysis of associations between these ‘proximities’ and co-patenting. The results show that while collaboration within firms, research centres and universities remains crucial, external networks of inventors are key feature of innovation teams. The analysis shows that external networks are highly dependent on previous social...	Riccardo Crescenzi, Max Nathan, Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose
8	2007	The Impact of Acquisitions on the Productivity of Inventors at Semiconductor Firms: A Synthesis of Knowledge-Based and Incentive-Based Perspectives ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor productivity and knowledge transfer across firms in the context of acquisitions, which is a direct mechanism of technology diffusion through worker movement and organizational change. It is especially useful for understanding how incentives, skill overlap, and firm boundaries affect the quality and rate of knowledge recombination, though it does not focus on labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions. We show how knowledge-based and incentive-based perspectives complement each other to explain the effects of acquisitions on the productivity of inventors from acquired firms. Incentive-based theories account for their lower productivity relative to that of inventors at nonacquired firms, and both perspectives jointly explain why their productivity converges with that of inventors from acquiring firms. Higher productivity is achieved when there is greater overlap in routines and moderate overlap in skills, and when the acquired firm is large relative to its acquirer. This study clarifies the subtle manner in which incentives and the knowledge-based view are intertwined.	Rahul Kapoor, Kwanghui Lim
8	2000	The Meaning of Patent Citations: Report on the NBER/Case-Western Reserve Survey of Patentees ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies patent citations as a proxy for inventor communication and spillovers, which are central to understanding how knowledge diffuses through worker and inventor networks. It also speaks to the quality of citation-based measures by showing that many citations do not map cleanly into observed communication or technological linkages, which is useful for research on technology diffusion and inventor mobility. A survey of recent patentees was conducted to elicit their perceptions regarding the importance of their inventions, the extent of their communication with other inventors, and the relationship of both importance and communication to observed patent citations. A cohort of 1993 patentees were asked specifically about 2 patents that they had cited, and a third "placebo" patent that was similar but which they did not cite. One of the two cited inventors was also surveyed. We find that inventors report significant communication, at least some of which is in forms that suggests spillovers from the cited inventor to the citing inventor. The perception of such communication was substantively and...	Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg, Michael J. Fogarty
8	2019	Corporate social responsibility as a defense against knowledge spillovers: Evidence from the inevitable disclosure doctrine ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms respond to knowledge spillovers and worker mobility frictions, using the rejection of the inevitable disclosure doctrine as a shock to knowledge leakage risk. It directly speaks to how firms try to retain talent and limit diffusion of valuable knowledge across employers, though its focus is on CSR as a defense rather than on aggregate productivity, innovation, or the broader equilibrium effects of mobility policies. Research Summary We examine whether companies respond to the threat of knowledge leakage by strategically increasing their engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR). To obtain exogenous variation in the threat of knowledge leakage, we exploit a natural experiment provided by the rejection of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) by several U.S. states. Using a difference‐in‐differences methodology we find that, following the rejection of the IDD, companies significantly increase their CSR. Our proposed rationale is that CSR helps mitigate knowledge leakage by (i) reducing employees' propensity to join a rival firm, and (ii) reducing employees' propensity to disclose the firm's...	Caroline Flammer, Aleksandra Kacperczyk
8	1998	Endogenous Spillovers and the Performance of Research Joint Ventures ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies endogenous knowledge spillovers in R&D and how organizational/strategic choices within research joint ventures affect the diffusion of technology across firms. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its analysis of spillover formation, anti-competitive behavior, and R&D collaboration is highly relevant to understanding mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and innovation incentives. We present a model of R&D with endogenous spillovers and demonstrate that noncooperation can produce maximal spillovers. The only other noncooperative outcome is minimal spillovers. When noncooperation achieves maximal spillovers so does an RJV, whereas minimal noncooperative spillovers imply partial—but not necessarily maximal—spillovers by an RJV. Partial RJV spillovers are chosen for anti‐competitive reasons and an RJV may also close a lab for anti‐competitive reasons. The possibility of anti‐competitive outcomes is precluded in the existing literature on RJVs which focuses on symmetric outcomes. Our model predicts when anti‐competitive behaviour by an RJV arises.	Yannis Katsoutacos, David Ulph
8	1998	A Patentability Requirement for Sequential Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies sequential innovation, firm rivalry, and how patent policy shapes incentives for R&D and technological progress. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor-market frictions directly, its analysis of dynamic efficiency and innovation incentives is highly relevant to understanding the broader determinants of knowledge diffusion and growth. This article investigates patent protection for a long sequence of innovations where firms repeatedly supersede each other. Incentives for R&D can be insufficient if successful firms earn market profit only until competitors achieve something better. To correct this problem, patents must provide protection against future innovators. This article proposes using a patentability requirement -- a minimum innovation size required for patents. A patentability requirement can stimulate R&D investment and increase dynamic efficiency. Intuitively, requiring firms to pursue larger innovations prolongs market incumbency because larger innovations are harder to achieve, and longer market incumbency...	Ted O’Donoghue
8	2009	Social Capital for Hire? Mobility of Technical Professionals and Firm Influence in Wireless Standards Committees ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility of technical professionals and how hiring affects the flow of influence and information across firms, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion. Its focus on social capital in wireless standards committees is not directly about productivity or innovation spillovers, but it offers relevant evidence on how mobile workers transfer firm-relevant capabilities and reshape interfirm relationships. The movement of personnel between firms has been shown to have important implications for firms, yet there has been little direct investigation of the underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to their human capital, mobile individuals carry social capital, affecting the outcomes of the firms they join and leave by altering the patterns of interaction between firms. In this study, we examine how job mobility affects firm influence in a technical standards setting committee for U.S. wireless telecommunications. We hypothesize and find that hiring individuals who are richer in social capital increases firm influence in technical standards setting committees by increasing the hiring...	Gina Dokko, Lori Rosenkopf
8	2017	Text matching to measure patent similarity ↗ This paper is closely related because it develops a method to measure technological similarity between patents, which is useful for studying how knowledge diffuses across firms and inventors. It is especially relevant insofar as it replicates work on localized knowledge spillovers and can support analysis of inventor mobility, R&D spillovers, and technology transfer, though it does not directly study labor market frictions or worker movement. Research Summary : We propose using text matching to measure the technological similarity between patents. Technology experts from different fields validate the new similarity measure and its improvement on measures based on the United States Patent Classification System, and identify its limitations. As an application, we replicate prior findings on the localization of knowledge spillovers by constructing a case–control group of text‐matched patents. We also provide open access to the code and data to calculate the similarity between any two utility patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office between 1976 and 2013, or between any two patent portfolios. Managerial...	Sam Arts, Bruno Cassiman, Juan Carlos Gómez
8	2007	Does Geography Matter for Science-Based Firms? Epistemic Communities and the Geography of Research and Patenting in Biotechnology ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how geographically dispersed research collaboration shapes knowledge flows between scientific communities and firm innovation, which is central to understanding diffusion through worker- and knowledge-based networks. It is especially relevant for the project’s focus on the geography of knowledge transfer and the tension between open science and firm-level patenting, though it does not directly analyze labor market frictions, non-competes, or worker mobility per se. The spatial clustering of innovation has been associated with localized knowledge flows among small, knowledge-intensive firms, but knowledge flows may extend beyond regional boundaries through the participation of firm employees in broader knowledge-based communities. This paper analyzes biotechnology firms jointly engaged in technological innovation and open scientific research and proposes that the geography of their collaborations should reflect the distinctive social logics of these activities. I hypothesize that projects involving local ties are more likely to be patented by a firm than are projects involving distant contacts, both because proximity is conducive to innovation and...	Michelle Gittelman
8	2013	The dynamics of the inventor network in German biotechnology: geographic proximity versus triadic closure ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor collaboration networks as a channel for knowledge diffusion, directly engaging with how geographic distance and network structure shape the formation of innovation ties. While it does not focus on labor market frictions like non-competes or worker mobility per se, its analysis of inventor network evolution and longer-distance collaboration is highly relevant to understanding how knowledge spreads across firms and regions. Economic geography has developed a stronghold analyzing how geography impacts innovation. Yet, despite increased interest in networks, a critical assessment of the role of geography in the evolution of networks is still lacking. This article attempts to explore the interplay between geographic distance and triadic closure as two main forces that drive the evolution of collaboration networks. Analyzing the evolution of inventor networks in German biotechnology, the article theoretically argues and empirically demonstrates that—as the technological regime of an industry changes over time—inventors increasingly rely on network resources by forming links to partners of partners, while the...	Anne L. J. Ter Wal
8	2011	Local R&D Strategies and Multilocation Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how multilocation firms use internal linkages to manage knowledge flows and control technology diffusion across sites, which is central to understanding how knowledge moves within and between firms. While it does not directly focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its evidence on knowledge outflows, expropriation, and cluster competition is highly relevant to diffusion, spillovers, and firm responses to knowledge leakage. This study looks at the role of internal linkages in highly competitive clusters. We argue that, in addition to serving as a mechanism for sourcing knowledge, strong internal linkages help firms increase internalization and create higher levels of technological interdependence across firm locations. Firms with strong networks of internal linkages are able to maintain tighter control over local innovation and reduce the risk that knowledge outflows will advantage competitors in clusters. Our empirical analysis of the global semiconductor industry shows that industry leaders intensify internal linkages across locations when they collocate with direct market competitors, but not when they...	Juan Alcácer, Minyuan Zhao
8	2013	Geographic Constraints on Knowledge Spillovers: Political Borders vs. Spatial Proximity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the geographic frictions that shape knowledge spillovers through patent citations, which is central to understanding how worker mobility and other channels diffuse technology. Its focus is on borders and spatial proximity rather than labor market frictions like non-competes or inventor movement, but it provides useful evidence on how constraints can impede knowledge diffusion. Geographic localization of knowledge spillovers is a central tenet in multiple streams of research. However, prior work has typically examined this phenomenon considering only one geographic unit—country, state, or metropolitan area—at a time and has rarely accounted for spatial distance. We disentangle these multiple effects by using a regression framework employing choice-based sampling to estimate the likelihood of citation between random patents. We find both country and state borders to have independent effects on knowledge diffusion beyond what just geographic proximity in the form of metropolitan collocation or shorter within-region distances can explain. An identification...	Jasjit Singh, Matt Marx
8	2018	Global connectedness and local innovation in industrial clusters ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of how external links and exposure to global networks affect innovation within localized industrial clusters, which is directly relevant to knowledge diffusion and spillovers. It may focus more on geography and cluster dynamics than on worker mobility specifically, but the connection to technology transfer and local productivity is likely substantial. No abstract available.	Ekaterina Turkina, Ari Van Assche
8	2009	Tracing the links between science and technology: An exploratory analysis of scientists’ and inventors’ networks ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how individual scientists and inventors connect scientific and technological networks, identifying authors-inventors as gatekeepers of knowledge transfer. While it focuses more on network overlap than worker mobility or labor market frictions, it is highly relevant to understanding how human movement and cross-domain careers facilitate technology diffusion and spillovers. The paper provides an exploratory analysis of the research networks linking scientists working in an open science environment, and researchers involved in the private technology domain. The study combines data on scientific co-authorship with data on patent co-invention, at the level of individual researchers, for three science-intensive technology fields, i.e. lasers, semiconductors and biotechnology, in order to assess the extent of the overlap between the two communities and to identify the role of key individuals in the process of knowledge transfer. Our findings reveal that the extent of the connectedness among scientists and inventors is rather large, and that particular individuals...	Stefano Breschi, Christian Catalini
8	2010	EVERYWHERE? THE GEOGRAPHY OF KNOWLEDGE ↗ This is closely related because it explicitly addresses the geography of knowledge, including how knowledge is created, stored, and transmitted across firms and innovation systems. While it is a broad review rather than a focused study of worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides important conceptual background for understanding knowledge diffusion and spillovers. ABSTRACT This paper reviews what we know about the spatial manifestations of knowledge. The knowledge production function addresses the easily measured portion of knowledge produced. Research on learning, particularly interactive and collective learning, in firms and in innovation systems, promises to unveil the human and organizational processes by which knowledge is created, stored, and transmitted to others. Our understanding of innovation and technological change depends on how well we tackle knowledge and its geography.	Edward J. Malecki	Other
8	2017	Microgeography and the Direction of Inventive Activity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how spatial proximity and search costs shape scientific collaboration, the direction of inventive activity, and the quality of output—core mechanisms in knowledge diffusion. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market policies like non-competes, but it provides important evidence on frictions that affect technology transfer and inventive trajectories across labs. I provide novel empirical evidence grounded in an original theoretical framework to explain why colocation matters for the rate, direction, and quality of scientific collaboration. To address endogeneity concerns due to selection into colocation and matching, I exploit the constraints imposed on the spatial allocation of labs on the Jussieu campus of Paris by the removal of asbestos from its buildings. Consistent with search costs constituting a major friction to collaboration, colocation increases the likelihood of joint research by 3.5 times, an effect that is mostly driven by lab pairs that face higher search costs ex ante. Furthermore, separation does not negatively affect collaboration...	Christian Catalini
8	2002	Measuring knowledge spillovers in manufacturing and services: an empirical assessment of alternative approaches ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how firms receive external knowledge through spillovers and evaluates alternative ways to measure the extent of that diffusion across firms and sectors. It is useful background for the project’s broader questions about knowledge transfer and technological diffusion, though it does not focus specifically on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or policy restrictions like non-competes. In this paper it is tested which of the various alternative approaches for constructing knowledge spillover pools suggested in existing literature measures the extent to which a firm can costlessly receive external knowledge best. Since knowledge spillovers are unmeasurable, a 'goodness of fit' measure is constructed using innovation survey data. It turns out that measures of the uncentered correlation of firm characteristics seem to fit actual knowledge spillovers best. Direct measures constructed from innovation survey data appear to work reasonably well while measures of the Euclidean technological distance and of the geographical distance lead to counterintuitive results. Empirical...	Ulrich Kaiser
8	2009	How firm capabilities affect who benefits from foreign technology ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion from multinational entry and identifies firm capabilities, such as R&D and educated workers, that shape who benefits from knowledge spillovers. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, but it is useful for understanding the mechanisms and heterogeneity of technology transfer across firms. We explore how firm capabilities affect the diffusion of technology brought with foreign direct investment (FDI). Using a panel dataset on Indonesian manufacturers from 1988 to 1996, we measure how the productivity of differing domestic firms responds to the entry of multinational competitors. We find that firms with investments in research and development and firms with highly educated employees adopt more technology from foreign entrants than others. In contrast, firms that have a small "technology gap," meaning that they are close to the international best-practice frontier, benefit less than firms with weak prior technical competency. This finding suggests that the marginal return to...	Garrick Blalock, Paul Gertler
8	2004	Overseas R&D, knowledge sourcing, and patenting: an empirical study of Japanese R&D investment in the US ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms source knowledge through overseas R&D subsidiaries and how local technological environments affect invention and patenting across countries. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it is highly relevant to the broader question of cross-firm and cross-border knowledge diffusion mechanisms. This paper purports to study the contribution of R&D at home and abroad to the firm's inventive activity, using a sample of 137 Japanese multinationals. The empirical analysis relates the number of inventions in Japan and that in the US, as measured by the number of patents issued by the USPTO, to the parent's R&D, the US subsidiaries' R&D, the presence of R&D in Europe, the firm's experience in the US, entry mode, and industry dummies. In addition, to study the subsidiary's role in sourcing local technological knowledge, we construct indices of local technological strength of the state in which the subsidiary is located. The results, most importantly, indicate that these indices positively...	Tomoko Iwasa, Hiroyuki Odagiri
8	2017	From Global Value Chains (GVC) to Innovation Systems for Local Value Chains and Knowledge Creation ↗ [Title only] This title looks highly relevant because it connects global value chains with innovation systems and knowledge creation, which are central to how technology and know-how diffuse across firms and regions. It does not explicitly mention worker mobility or labor market frictions, so the link to your core focus is indirect rather than direct, but it could still speak to broader mechanisms of knowledge transfer and local capability building. No abstract available.	Keun Lee, Marina Szapiro, Zhuqing Mao	Other
8	2006	Human capital flows and regional knowledge assets: a simultaneous equation approach ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interregional mobility of skilled human capital and how that movement shapes regional knowledge assets and innovation outcomes. Its main contribution—that embodied human capital flows matter more than direct university spillovers—fits squarely with the project’s focus on worker mobility as a mechanism for technology and knowledge diffusion. Our paper constructs a simultaneous equation model in order to investigate the relationship between interregional human capital knowledge flows and regional knowledge assets. With the aid of a GIS system, we model the simultaneous relationship between the interregional migration behaviour of British students and graduates from university and into employment, the knowledge assets of the regions, and the regions of employment of the graduates. Our results indicate that after controlling for the human-capital flows of students and graduates, there is little evidence in favour of direct spillovers between university research and regional innovation. Rather, the primary role of the university...	Alessandra Faggian
8	2007	Nature and dynamics of appropriability: strategies for appropriating returns on innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it examines how firms protect innovation rents through mechanisms including contracts, labor legislation, and human-resource management, which directly connect to worker mobility frictions and knowledge leakage. While it is more focused on appropriability and IP strategy than on mobility-driven diffusion itself, it provides useful context for how firms respond to labor mobility when trying to retain returns to R&D. The appropriability regime represents a combination of available and effective means of protecting intangibles and innovations, their profitability, and the increased rents due to research and development. It has a central role in appropriating returns on investment, but the nature of appropriability and the strategies for appropriation may not be fully known to managers, or even to researchers. The aim in this study, therefore, is to categorise the appropriability regime by extending, combining and complementing previous research. We also conducted a survey among 299 companies in order to determine the roles, availability, strength and efficiency of appropriability mechanisms. Such...	Pia Hurmelinna‐Laukkanen, Kaisu Puumalainen	Other
8	2015	Employee Mobility and Organizational Outcomes ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly reviews employee mobility as a mechanism for transferring human and relational capital across firms, which is central to knowledge diffusion and spillovers in your project. It is especially relevant for its discussion of labor market imperfections, contextual moderators, and alternative channels that shape how mobility affects organizational outcomes, though it is more of a conceptual review than an empirical study of productivity, innovation, or policy effects. A large and growing literature spanning multiple fields has identified employee mobility as a critical influence on several important organizational outcomes. However, extant research on the topic is highly fragmented and lacks a unifying theoretical framework, impeding the development of a cumulative conceptually integrated body of research. We seek to remedy this situation by undertaking a review of research on employee mobility and its organizational impacts and casting it within a novel integrative conceptual framework. As a critical foundation for this framework, we highlight how the various organizational impacts of employee mobility are ultimately engendered by different dimensions...	John Mawdsley, Deepak Somaya
8	2000	Incumbency and R&D Incentives: Licensing the Gale of Creative Destruction ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the market for ideas and licensing shape firms’ R&D incentives, which is central to understanding how knowledge is created, transferred, and diffused across firms. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its analysis of incumbents, entrants, and technology transfer speaks to firm-level mechanisms that influence innovation and diffusion. This paper analyzes the relationship between incumbency and R&D incentives in the context of a model of technological competition in which technologically successful entrants are able to license their innovation to (or be acquired by) an incumbent. That such a sale should take place is natural, since postinnovation monopoly profits are greater than the sum of duopoly profits. We identify three key findings about how innovative activity is shaped by licensing. First, since an incumbent's threat to engage in imitative R&D during negotiations increases its bargaining power, there is a purely strategic incentive for incumbents to develop an R&D capability. Second, incumbents research more...	Joshua S. Gans, Scott Stern	Other
8	2003	Wage Dispersion ↗ This book is closely related because it centers on search frictions, on-the-job worker mobility, and cross-firm wage differences as key drivers of labor market outcomes. While it is more about wage dispersion than technology diffusion per se, its analysis of worker search, matching, and firm wage policies is highly relevant to understanding how mobility frictions shape labor allocation and the movement of knowledge across firms. Why are workers with identical skills found in both "good" jobs and "bad" jobs? Why are workers who do similar jobs paid differently, contrary to standard competitive theory? Observable differences in workers doing the same job account for only 30 percent of wage variation. In Wage Dispersion, Dale Mortensen examines the reasons for pay differentials in the other 70 percent. He finds that these differentials, or wage dispersion, are largely the result of job search friction (which arises when workers do not know the wages offered by all employers) and cross-firm differences in wage policy and productivity. Mortensen examines previous theoretical explanations for wage dispersion, testing...	Dale T. Mortensen
8	2013	Cutting the Gordian knot: The effect of knowledge complexity on employee mobility and entrepreneurship ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility and employee entrepreneurship as mechanisms of knowledge transfer, directly matching the project’s focus on worker movement and technology diffusion. Its emphasis on how knowledge complexity affects whether knowledge flows to rival firms or startups also speaks to the direction and quality of diffusion under labor market frictions, though it is more about knowledge characteristics than policy or aggregate productivity effects. Employee entrepreneurship and employee moves to rival firms (employee mobility) have both been recognized as critical drivers of the transfer of knowledge. Drawing on a unique database of intra‐industry inventor entrepreneurship and mobility events in the U.S . semiconductor industry, I examine the effect of the complexity of inventors' prior patenting activities on their decisions to join a rival firm or found a start‐up. The findings show that even though complexity inhibits knowledge diffusion to rival firms through employee mobility, complex knowledge may be underexploited within existing organizations and may still flow to startups through employee entrepreneurship. This study sheds...	Martin Ganco
8	2004	Patents in a Model of Endogenous Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth where patents affect innovation incentives, cumulative knowledge accumulation, and diffusion through disclosure and licensing. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its analysis of knowledge transmission, patent thickets, and policy impacts on growth is highly relevant to understanding broader mechanisms of technology diffusion. I develop a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth to jointly analyze two distinct theories of the patent system’s social value: (1) that patents stimulate innovation by enhancing private incentives to invest in R&D (reward theory) and (2) that patents disseminate technical information into the public domain through disclosure requirements (contract theory). The model features endogenous innovator selection into patents versus secrecy based on heterogenous innovation size, the effective cost of disclosure, and expected licensing revenue from holding a patent. Innovation is cumulative, patent rights overlap across industries, and new innovator’s pay mandatory licensing fees to a...	Ted O’Donoghue, Josef Zweimüller
8	2004	How special is the special relationship? Using the impact of US R&D spillovers on UK firms as a test of technology sourcing ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies international technology diffusion through the location of inventors and R&D activity, which is central to understanding how knowledge moves across firms and borders. It does not focus on labor market frictions or policy restrictions on worker mobility, but it provides strong evidence on inventor mobility and spillovers as a mechanism for productivity growth. How much does US-based R&D benefit other countries and through what mechanisms? We test the 'technology sourcing' hypothesis that foreign research labs located on US soil tap into US R&D spillovers and improve home country productivity. Using panels of UK and US firms matched to patent data we show that UK firms who had established a high proportion of US-based inventors by 1990 benefited disproportionately from the growth of the US R&D stock over the next 10 years. We estimate that UK firmsÒ Total Factor Productivity would have been at least 5% lower in 2000 (about $14bn) in the absence of the US R&D growth in the 1990s. We also find that technology sourcing is more important for countries...	Rupert Harrison, John Van Reenen, Rachel Griffith
8	2005	Patents, Citations, and Innovations: A Window on the Knowledge Economy This book is closely related because it studies patents and citations as measures of innovation and knowledge diffusion, including geographic patterns of spillovers. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but the inventor identity, employer, and location data make it very useful for analyzing how inventors and firms transmit knowledge across organizations. Innovation and technological change, long recognized as the main drivers of long-term economic growth, are elusive notions that are difficult to conceptualize and even harder to measure in a consistent, systematic way. This book demonstrates the usefulness of patents and citations data as a window on the process of technological change and as a powerful tool for research on the economics of innovation. Patent records contain a wealth of information, including the inventors' identity, location, and employer, as well as the technological field of the invention. Patents also contain citation references to previous patents, which allow one to trace links across inventions. The book lays out the...	Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg
8	2011	International scientist mobility and the locus of knowledge and technology transfer ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies scientist mobility as a mechanism for knowledge and technology transfer to firms, directly aligning with the project’s focus on worker movement and diffusion of knowledge. Its emphasis on cross-country mobility, brain circulation, and how mobility patterns shape the locus of transfer is highly relevant, though it focuses more on public science than on labor market frictions or firm dynamics. Despite the growing interest of scholars and policymakers to better understand the determinants for researchers in public science to transfer knowledge and technology to firms, little is known how temporary international mobility of scientists affects both their propensity to engage in knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) as well as the locus of such transfer. Based on a sample of more than 950 German academics from science and engineering faculties, we investigate how the duration and the frequency of scientists' visits at research institutions outside their home country affect KTT activities. We find that most mobile scientists engage in KTT to firms both in the host and in their home...	Jakob Edler, Heide Fier, Christoph Grimpe
8	2010	Do leading or lagging firms learn more from exporting? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how exporting changes firms' innovative productivity and patenting, which is part of the broader question of how cross-market exposure diffuses knowledge and technology. Its focus is not worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it is useful for understanding how firms learn and translate external knowledge into innovation, especially through heterogeneous firm responses. Abstract An interesting theoretical debate arises when considering firm heterogeneity in learning from exporting. One perspective intimates that technologically lagging firms stand to benefit more from exporting because exposure to technological knowledge in foreign markets allows these firms to close the gap with their more technologically endowed counterparts. A contrasting perspective posits that technologically superior firms benefit more from exporting since these firms are better equipped to translate knowledge acquired in foreign markets into innovation. Using a sample of 1,744 Spanish manufacturing firms from 1990–1997, this study empirically investigates how exporting...	Robert Salomon, Byungchae Jin
8	2015	Knowledge flows and the absorptive capacity of regions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility and networks as channels for knowledge diffusion across regions, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement transmits technology and ideas. It also highlights how regional absorptive capacity shapes the innovation gains from knowledge inflows, offering useful evidence on the heterogeneous effects of mobility on diffusion and productivity. This paper assesses the extent to which absorptive capacity determines knowledge flows' impact on regional innovation. In particular, it looks at how regions with large absorptive capacity make the most of external inflows of knowledge and information brought in by means of inventor mobility and networks, and fosters local innovation. The paper uses an unbalanced panel of 274 regions over 8 years to estimate a regional knowledge production function with fixed-effects. It finds evidence that inflows of inventors are critical for wealthier regions, while it has more nuanced effects for less developed areas. It also shows that regions' absorptive capacity critically adds a premium to tap into...	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
8	2010	Is there a market for ideas? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the market structure through which ideas and technology are allocated, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion across firms and the institutions that facilitate or hinder it. While it is more about market design and IP exchange than worker mobility per se, its discussion of how institutional frictions shape the transfer and commercialization of knowledge is highly relevant to the project. This article draws on recent work in market design to evaluate the conditions under which a market for ideas or technology (MfTs) will emerge and operate efficiently. As highlighted by Roth ( 2007 ), effective market design must ensure three basic principles: market thickness, lack of congestion, and market safety. Roth also highlights the importance of dealing with "repugnance." Our analysis identifies the factors that are, in most circumstances, likely to inhibit the allocative efficiency of MfT. We show that key institutional developments such as the development of formalized IP exchanges suggest that effective market design may be possible for some innovation markets. Finally, our...	Joshua S. Gans, Steven Stern
8	2015	Mapping the technological landscape: Measuring technology distance, technological footprints, and technology evolution ↗ This paper is closely related because it develops measures of technological proximity, overlap, and firm technological footprints that are directly useful for studying knowledge diffusion and spillovers across firms. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides tools and empirical context for analyzing how technology and knowledge evolve and spread in the economy. We develop and apply a set of measures that enable a fine-grained characterization of technological capabilities based on the USPTO database. These measures can capture the distance between any two patents, and help to identify outlier patents. They also provide a rich characterization of a firm's technological footprint, including its depth and breadth. The measures also enable researchers to assess the technological overlap, similarity, and proximity of the technological footprints of two or more firms. At the level of the macro technology landscape, the measures can be used to explore such dynamics as technology agglomeration, knowledge spillovers, and technology landscape evolution. We...	Barak S. Aharonson, Melissa A. Schilling
8	2015	Migration of skilled workers and innovation: A European Perspective ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how skilled worker migration affects innovation and knowledge creation across countries, which is central to understanding worker mobility as a channel for technology diffusion and growth. It does not focus on specific labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions, but it provides useful evidence on the innovation effects of facilitating skilled mobility. This paper analyzes the effect of skilled migration on two measures of innovation, patenting and bibliometric data, in a panel of 20 European countries between 1995 and 2008. The empirical findings show that a larger pool of migrants in the skilled professions is associated with higher levels of knowledge creation. Skilled migrants contribute both to the creation of "private" knowledge, measured by the number of patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and to more "public" basic research, measured by the number of citations to published articles. This finding is robust, in that it uses both an occupation-based and an education-based index of skilled migration, as well as...	Valentina Bosetti, Cristina Cattaneo, Elena Verdolini
8	2022	Higher education and corporate innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a larger supply of educated labor affects firms’ innovative human capital, patenting, and productivity growth, which speaks directly to channels of knowledge creation and diffusion through worker composition. It is somewhat less central than papers on mobility frictions or inventor movement because the mechanism here is higher education supply rather than worker movement across firms, but it still provides important evidence on how skilled labor availability shapes innovation outcomes. This paper investigates the impact of higher education on corporate innovation. To establish causality, we exploit a policy-induced exogenous shock in the supply of Chinese college-educated labor starting in 2003. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that Chinese firms in skilled industries generate better innovation outcomes as measured by patents and citations than those in unskilled industries. This effect is more pronounced among firms headquartered in a province with more science and engineering college graduates, young firms that are more likely to hire young graduates, and firms located near universities. Moreover, higher education expansion increases a firm’s...	Dongmin Kong, Bohui Zhang, Jian Zhang
8	2010	Patent thickets, courts, and the market for innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patent market frictions affect the speed of technology diffusion through licensing, which is central to understanding knowledge transfer and innovation dynamics. Although it focuses on patent litigation and court structure rather than worker mobility, the mechanisms of reduced diffusion and faster settlement are highly relevant to how institutional frictions shape the spread of technology across firms. We study how fragmentation of patent rights and the formation of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affected the duration of patent disputes, and thus the speed of technology diffusion through licensing. We develop a model of patent litigation which predicts faster settlement when patent rights are fragmented and when there is less uncertainty about court outcomes, as was associated with the “pro-patent shift” of the CAFC. We confirm these predictions empirically using a data set that covers patent suits in U.S. district courts during the period 1975–2000. Finally, we analyze how fragmentation affects total settlement delay, considering both the reduction in dispute...	Alberto Galasso, Mark Schankerman
8	2003	The spatial pattern of localized R&D spillovers: an empirical investigation for Germany ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interregional R&D spillovers and how spatial transaction costs shape the diffusion of knowledge across regions, which speaks directly to mechanisms of technology transfer. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it provides useful evidence on how barriers to interaction affect the rate and direction of knowledge diffusion and innovation outcomes. The present paper employs spatial econometrics techniques to discriminate empirically between various economically plausible spatial patterns of interregional knowledge spillovers between west German planning regions in the 1990s. In general, interregional spillovers are found to contribute significantly to regional knowledge production. Due to fairly high spatial transaction costs, however, only a small fraction of the knowledge available in neighboring regions actually spills over. Consequently, the absolute contribution of ‘foreign’ knowledge to a region's innovative performance is quite low. Moreover, only regions with low R&D density benefit from interregional spillovers. For regions...	Eckhardt Bode
8	2016	The Real Effects of Lending Relationships on Innovative Firms and Inventor Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventor mobility and how a financial market friction changes where inventive workers move, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion across firms and regions. It also speaks to how firm-level constraints affect innovation and the allocation of innovative human capital, though its main mechanism is lending relationships rather than labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions. We study how relationship lending determines the financing of innovation. Exploiting a negative shock to relationships, we show that it reduces the number of innovative firms, especially those that depend more on relationship lending such as small, opaque firms. This credit supply shock leads to reallocation of inventors whereby young and productive inventors leave small firms and move out of geographical areas where lending relationships are hurt. Overall, our results show that credit markets affect both the level of innovation activity and the distribution of innovative human capital across the economy.Received April 11, 2013; editorial decision May 25, 2016 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.	Johan Hombert, Adrien Matray
8	2009	When Does Scientist Recruitment Affect Technological Repositioning? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies scientist recruitment as a mechanism for technological repositioning, which aligns with your project’s focus on worker mobility as a channel for knowledge and technology diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how firm-level hiring choices and talent dependence shape the direction and quality of innovation, though it is less directly about labor market frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. An investigation of the conditions in which the recruitment of technologically distant scientists results in a significant technological repositioning reveals, on the basis of 2,643 biotechnology industry hiring events between 1973 and 1999, that recruitment is positively associated with repositioning. However, the more a firm's innovative productivity depends on one or a few “star” scientists, the less likely it is that recruitment affects repositioning. This likelihood increases at moderate levels of technological breadth and declines at very high or low levels. These results offer insights into the challenges of developing combinative capabilities by hiring scientific personnel.	Daniel Tzabbar
8	2008	Bigger and safer: the diffusion of competitive advantage ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how valuable technologies diffuse across firms through interfirm networks and geographic frictions, which maps well onto knowledge spillovers and the spatial/network structure of diffusion in your project. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it provides important evidence on how distance and network position shape the spread of competitive advantage. Abstract Research on the diffusion of technologies that give competitive advantage is needed to understand the role of technology in competition. Predictions on which firms first obtain useful technologies are made by cluster theory, which holds that the diffusion is geographically bounded, and network theory, which holds that adoption is more rapid in central network positions. These predictions can be evaluated using data on the diffusion of supplier innovations that give competitive advantage to firms in the buyer industry. Here, the diffusion of new ship types is studied using the heterogeneous diffusion model and data on shipping firm‐shipbuilder networks, showing that valuable...	Henrich R. Greve
8	2004	Knowledge Networks from Patent Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge flows and technology transfer using patent data, which is central to understanding how ideas diffuse across locations and organizations. However, it focuses on inter-city networks rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention mechanisms, so it is more of a descriptive knowledge-diffusion context paper than a direct match to the project. With the increasing complexity of technology, cross-regional joint patent applications and patent transfers have become a prominent component of knowledge activities, attracting substantial attention of academic researchers. To examine the state and distribution characteristics of inter-city knowledge flows, this study utilizes patent data from the China National Intellectual Property Administration database and conducts in-depth data exploration to construct two urban knowledge networks (UKN). Specifically, over 1.23 million value co-creation patents are extracted to develop the urban value co-creation knowledge network (UKN-C), while more than 1.42 million technology transfer patents are...	Stefano Breschi, Francesco Lissoni
8	2010	The Dynamics of Interorganizational Careers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility across organizations as a career mechanism and uses a matching framework to explain how labor market opportunities shape those moves. It is relevant to knowledge diffusion research because the mobility of skilled IT workers can transmit skills and expertise across firms, though the abstract focuses more on career ladders and turnover than on explicit technology spillovers or innovation outcomes. How do workers build careers across organizations? We propose that increased worker mobility means that workers may now build their careers using interorganizational career ladders, working in certain kinds of organizations earlier in a career and in other kinds of organizations later in the career. We develop a matching framework that predicts such interorganizational moves based on how systematic changes in workers' needs and resources over the course of their careers alter the kinds of organizations they will best match. We specifically propose that workers will be more likely to work for organizations that provide more training early in their careers, and work for organizations that...	Matthew Bidwell, Forrest Briscoe
8	2020	Labor cost, government intervention, and corporate innovation: Evidence from China ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market policy and labor costs affect firm innovation and technology adoption, which is central to understanding how labor market frictions shape knowledge diffusion and productivity growth. However, it focuses more on induced innovation from wage changes and government intervention than on worker mobility, non-competes, or direct inventor/skill spillovers across firms. Abstract We examine the inducement effect of labor cost on corporate innovation in emerging markets. To establish causality, we adopt a difference-in-differences approach, based on the variations generated by the passage of the new Labor Contract Law in China, as well as an instrumental variable approach. We find the inducement effect of labor cost is more pronounced for Chinese non-state-owned enterprises, firms without political connections, and firms with low labor productivity. Our results support the induced innovation hypothesis in that increases in wages will induce invention and technology adoption, but also suggest that government intervention through state ownership and political...	Jianqiang Li, Yaowen Shan, Gary Gang Tian, et al.
8	2008	Using the variance structure of the conditional autoregressive spatial specification to model knowledge spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers from patent activity and how they diffuse across regions through technological and spatial linkages. While it does not focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm hiring decisions, it is directly relevant to the broader question of how knowledge travels and how its direction and heterogeneity can be modeled. Abstract This study investigates the pattern of knowledge spillovers arising from patent activity between European regions. A Bayesian hierarchical model is developed that specifies region‐specific latent effects parameters modeled using a connectivity structure between regions that can reflect geographical proximity in conjunction with technological and other types of proximity. This approach exploits the fact that interregional relationships may exhibit industry‐specific technological linkages or transportation network linkages, which is in contrast to traditional studies relying exclusively on geographical proximity. We also allow for both symmetric and asymmetric knowledge spillovers...	Olivier Parent, James P. LeSage
8	2009	Breakthrough inventions and migrating clusters of innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how breakthrough inventions shift the geography of innovation and how labor mobility accelerates the migration of inventive activity across places. Its focus on immigrant scientists and engineers as a proxy for the mobility of the technology labor force speaks directly to worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion, though it is more about spatial clustering than firm-level frictions like non-competes or hiring policies. We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top 1% of US inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent citations. Patenting growth is significantly higher in cities and technologies where breakthrough inventions occur after 1984 relative to peer locations that do not experience breakthrough inventions. This growth differential in turn depends on the mobility of the technology's labor force, which we model through the extent that technologies depend upon immigrant scientists and engineers. Spatial adjustments are faster for technologies that...	William R. Kerr
8	2014	Agglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology and labor flows among firms as the mechanism behind agglomeration, directly overlapping with worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Its focus on how interaction costs shape cluster formation and patent-based technology spillovers makes it relevant for understanding how frictions affect the direction and geography of knowledge transmission, even though it is more about spatial clustering than firm-level labor market policy. We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions yield agglomeration clusters that are much larger than the underlying agglomerative forces themselves. Empirically, we demonstrate that our model’s assumptions are present in the structure of technology and labor flows within Silicon Valley. Our model further identifies how the lengths over which agglomerative forces operate influence the shapes and sizes of industrial clusters; we confirm these predictions using variations across...	William Kerr, Scott Duke Kominers
8	2014	Migrant scientists and international networks ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how migrant scientists expand international research networks, which is a direct channel for knowledge diffusion across locations and firms. Its focus is more on collaboration patterns than on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility costs, but the findings on diaspora effects and returnees are highly relevant to worker mobility and technology transfer. We examine collaboration patterns of foreign scientists working in one of 16 countries in 2011 and compare them to the collaboration patterns of nonmigrant scientists and scientists with some international experience who have returned. Data come from the GlobSci survey. Major findings are that both foreign-born scientists and returnees have larger international research networks than do native researchers who lack an international background. The higher incidence of international collaboration among migrants is driven primarily by those who did not get their PhD training in the destination country but rather came for a postdoctoral position or directly for employment. We also find that a...	Giuseppe Scellato, Chiara Franzoni, Paula E. Stephan
8	2009	The many faces of absorptive capacity: spillovers of copper interconnect technology for semiconductor chips ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge spillovers in semiconductor technology are absorbed through collaboration and, importantly, hiring, which connects directly to worker mobility as a channel for technology diffusion. It also speaks to how firm R&D organization and relationships with universities, consortia, and suppliers shape the transmission of knowledge, though it is more about absorptive capacity than labor market frictions like non-competes or search. A case study of copper interconnect technology suggests that absorptive capacity exist in three forms: disciplinary, domain specific and encoded. Each involves different ways of managing R&D and linking internal to external research. Disciplinary absorptive capacity requires a firm to actively engage with the scientific community, while protecting domain-specific knowledge. Domain-specific absorptive capacity depends upon influencing disciplinary research at universities and consortia, then capturing domain knowledge through collaboration and hiring. As technology develops, it becomes encoded, and absorption depends increasingly upon integrating knowledge from suppliers. Hence, absorptive...	Kwanghui Lim
8	2004	Working through Knowledge Pools: Labour Market Dynamics, the Transference of Knowledge and Ideas, and Industrial Clusters ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies labor mobility as a channel for knowledge and idea transfer within an ICT cluster, which is central to your project. Its empirical focus on how worker movement drives intracluster diffusion and innovation aligns well with questions about mobility frictions and knowledge spillovers, though it is more about cluster dynamics than policy restrictions like non-competes. This article explores a prominent cluster in the Swedish capital Stockholm and its surrounding region: the ICT (information and communications technology) cluster. In particular, the article focuses on the issue of the extent to which labour market and labour mobility are the most likely channels for local and extra-local sources of knowledge and ideas. Thus the article positions itself against a growing literature that focuses on rather diffuse and vague notions that knowledge and innovation reside 'in the air' or in the 'buzz' of urban life. Instead, the underlying hypothesis is that in many sectors and industries such things as a cosmopolitan street life or accidental face-to-face...	Dominic Power, Mats Lundmark
8	2006	Rewarding Sequential Innovators: Prizes, Patents, and Buyouts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies cumulative innovation and how property-rights design shapes incentives for sequential innovators, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and knowledge transfer. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor-market frictions directly, its analysis of patents, buyouts, and compulsory licensing speaks to mechanisms that affect how knowledge passes between inventors and firms. This paper presents a model of cumulative innovation in which firms are heterogeneous in their research ability. We study the optimal reward policy when the quality of the ideas and their subsequent development effort are private information. Monopoly power is a scarce resource to be allocated across innovators who arrive at various times. The optimal assignment of property rights must counterbalance the incentives of current and future innovators. The resulting mechanism resembles a menu of patents that have infinite duration and fixed scope. This optimal patent menu can be implemented with a simple buyout scheme: The innovator commits at the outset to a price ceiling at which he will sell...	Hugo A. Hopenhayn, Gerard Llobet, Matthew Mitchell
8	2019	Consider This: Training, Wages, and the Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete enforceability, a key labor market friction in the project, and how it affects worker training, wages, and bargaining power. While it does not directly measure knowledge diffusion or firm-to-firm spillovers, its findings are highly relevant for understanding how mobility restrictions shape the accumulation and transfer of skills. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the author examines the effect of noncompete enforceability on employee training and wages. An increase from no enforcement of noncompetes to mean enforceability is associated with a 14% increase in training, which tends to be firm-sponsored and designed to upgrade or teach new skills. In contrast to theoretical expectations, the results show no evidence of a relationship between noncompete enforceability and self-sponsored training. Despite the increases in training, an increase from non-enforcement of noncompetes to mean enforceability is associated with a 4% decrease in hourly wages. Consistent with reduced bargaining power...	Evan Starr
8	1991	High-Technology Agglomeration and the Labor Market: The Case of Silicon Valley ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how worker mobility and local labor-market fluidity in Silicon Valley facilitate rapid circulation of technological knowledge across firms. It speaks to the project’s core themes of knowledge diffusion, search frictions, and the innovation effects of labor-market structure, though it is more descriptive and regional than a broader policy or equilibrium analysis. In this paper the pattern of labor-market activity associated with major high-technology agglomerations within the USA are examined, drawing upon the results of a mailed questionnaire survey of firms in the semiconductor industry. The analysis is focused upon the cluster of specialized semiconductor firms in Silicon Valley, to determine the contribution of local labor-market processes to the growth and development of this high-technology production complex. Fluid employment relations and efficiencies in search and mobility within the local labor market provide Silicon Valley firms remarkable flexibility in meeting their labor demands and help to ensure a rapid circulation of knowledge and...	David P. Angel
8	1999	The Diffusion of Process Innovations: A Selective Review ↗ This review is closely related because it surveys economic models of technology diffusion across firms, including learning, strategic interaction, and inter-firm knowledge transfer. While it is broader than worker mobility specifically, its emphasis on geography and networking as channels of diffusion makes it useful background for understanding how knowledge spreads through labor markets and firms. This paper surveys some of the most noteworthy literature on the diffusion of process technologies from the point of view of economics. It examines the main theoretical approaches to the diffusion phenomenon: epidemic and learning effects, equilibrium models associated with firm characteristics and strategic interaction. It also discusses the role of the supply side. Empirical work modelling inter-firm diffusion is reviewed, and special attention is given to the role of geography and inter-firm networking in the process of knowledge transfer and diffusion. Some suggestions for further research are presented as a conclusion.	Rui Baptista
8	2013	Externalities of openness in innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how openness in innovation generates positive externalities through knowledge diffusion, which is central to understanding how technology spreads across firms. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its emphasis on diffusion, spillovers, and the gap between private and social returns is highly relevant to the project’s broader questions about knowledge transfer and innovation policy. Discussion of open innovation has typically stressed the benefits to the individual enterprise from boundary-spanning linkages and improved internal knowledge sharing. In this paper we explore the potential for wider benefits from openness in innovation and argue that openness may itself generate positive externalities by enabling improved knowledge diffusion. The potential for these (positive) externalities suggests a divergence between the private and social returns to openness and the potential for a sub-optimal level of openness where this is determined purely by firms’ private returns. Our analysis is based on Irish plant-level panel data from manufacturing industry over the period...	Stephen Roper, Priit Vahter, James H. Love
8	2017	Patent Publication and the Market for Ideas ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patent publication reduces information frictions and facilitates transactions in the market for ideas, which is a key channel for technology diffusion. While it is not about worker mobility directly, the mechanism—lowering search and bargaining costs to speed knowledge transfer—connects strongly to the project’s themes of diffusion, spillovers, and institutional frictions. In this paper, we study the effect of invention disclosure through patent publication on the market for ideas. We do so by analyzing the effects of the American Inventor’s Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA)—which required U.S. patent applications to be published 18 months after their filing date rather than at patent grant—on the timing of licensing deals in the biomedical industry. We find that post-AIPA U.S. patent applications are significantly more likely to be licensed before patent grant and shortly after 18-month publication. Licensing delays are reduced by about 10 months, on average, after AIPA’s enactment. These findings suggest a hitherto unexplored benefit of the patent system: by...	Deepak Hegde, Hong Luo
8	2014	More stars stay, but the brightest ones still leave: Job hopping in the shadow of patent enforcement ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patent enforcement and firm reputation affect inventor mobility within an industry, directly tying legal frictions to the movement of knowledge workers. Its findings on how litigiousness changes both the propensity to leave and the composition of departing talent speak to worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion and firm-level retention strategies. Competitive advantage often rests on the skills and expertise of individuals who may leave for rival organizations. Although institutional factors like non‐compete regimes shape intra‐industry mobility patterns, far less is known about firm‐specific reputations built through patent enforcement. This study formally models and empirically tests how a firm's prior litigiousness over patents (i.e., its reputation for IP toughness) influences employee mobility. Based on inventor data from the U.S . semiconductor industry, we find that litigiousness not only diminishes the proclivity of inventive workers to “job hop” to others in the industry, it also shifts the distribution of talent released to...	Martin Ganco, Rosemarie Ham Ziedonis, Rajshree Agarwal
8	2013	Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility and how ethnic innovators transmit knowledge across borders within multinational firms, which is central to understanding labor-mediated technology diffusion. It also speaks to firm-level organization of innovation and foreign affiliate expansion, though it is less directly about frictions like non-competes or labor market policies. This paper studies the impact that ethnic innovators have on the global activities of U.S. firms by analyzing detailed data on patent applications and on the operations of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The results indicate that increases in the share of a firm's innovation performed by inventors of a particular ethnicity are associated with increases in the share of that firm's affiliate activity in countries related to that ethnicity. Ethnic innovators also appear to facilitate the disintegration of innovative activity across borders and to allow U.S. multinationals to form new affiliates abroad without the support of local joint venture partners. This paper was...	C. Fritz Foley, William R. Kerr
8	2014	Activating Cross-border Brokerage ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies skilled worker mobility as a channel for cross-border knowledge transfer, directly aligning with the project’s focus on how workers diffuse technology and know-how across organizations and countries. It is especially useful for understanding the conditions under which mobile workers successfully transmit knowledge, though it is more about return migration and organizational learning than firm-level frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. Using an original dataset of 4,183 former J-1 Visa holders from 81 countries—all of whom had worked in the U.S.—I examine how skilled return migrants, as cross-border brokers, transfer knowledge about organizational practices from abroad to their home countries. I hypothesize that returnees’ knowledge transfer success depends on their embeddedness in both their home- and host-country workplaces and develop and test theory about the organizational and cultural conditions that activate or suppress skilled returnees’ ability to broker knowledge across borders. Findings show that not only do host- and home-country embeddedness increase knowledge transfer success, but they also interact...	Dan Wang
8	2006	Knowledge Networks and the Geographic Locus of Innovation [Title only] This title strongly suggests a focus on how knowledge flows across locations and shapes where innovation occurs, which is closely related to technology diffusion and spillovers. It is likely relevant to worker mobility and firm-level knowledge transmission, although it may also emphasize geography and networks more broadly than labor market frictions specifically. No abstract available.	Caroline Simard
8	1999	Enforcement of employment security regulations, on-the-job search and unemployment duration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how employment security regulations affect on-the-job search, job-to-job mobility, and unemployment duration, which are central labor-market frictions in the diffusion of knowledge through worker movement. Although it does not directly analyze technology transfer or innovation, its model of temporary jobs competing with unemployed searchers is useful for understanding how policy shapes worker flows that can carry skills and know-how across firms. Contrary to the popular wisdom, 'sclerotic' European labour markets are chaaracterised relatively large job turnover rates. A model is developed which - unlike standard theories of job matching with on-the-job search - can account for the coexistence of strict employment security regulations, significant job-to-job shifts and high long-term unemployment rates in these countries. This is because: (i) employment security regulations can only be enforced by increasing the number of workers on 'short-term jobs', and (ii) the latter compete for jobs with unemployed jobseekers. Evidence is presented showing that job-finding probabilities of the unemployed are decreasing in the incidence of...	Tito Boeri
8	1994	Competitive Diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion across firms through imitation and innovation, which directly maps to the project’s interest in knowledge spillovers and the spread of productive techniques. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides useful theory on how diffusion affects firm dynamics, convergence, and the incentives for innovation versus imitation. This paper studies the evolution of a competitive industry in which a fixed number of firms reduce costs by innovating and by imitating their rivals' technologies. As the firms' technologies gradually improve, industry output expands and price falls. Technological leaders tend to rely on innovations to reduce their costs, whereas the laggards rely more on imitation. Imitation causes technology to spread from the leaders to the followers and forces some convergence of technology among firms as the industry matures. This convergence is accompanied by faster growth of smaller firms and a consequent tightening of the distribution of output over firms. Since imitation is a kind of spillover of...	Boyan Jovanovic, Glenn MacDonald
8	2002	Innovation and Spillovers in Regions: Evidence from European Patent Data ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns innovation and spillovers, which are central to how knowledge diffuses across firms, workers, and regions. Even though it does not explicitly mention mobility or labor-market frictions, European patent data often capture inventor movement and localized knowledge transfer, making it a strong fit for the project. No abstract available.	Laura Bottazzi, Giovanni Peri
8	2013	Coercive Contract Enforcement: Law and the Labor Market in Nineteenth Century Industrial Britain ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a labor market friction that restricts worker mobility and shows how coercive contract enforcement affected wages, prosecutions, and labor market responses to shocks. While it does not focus on modern inventor or skilled-worker knowledge spillovers directly, its framework is highly relevant for understanding how mobility constraints shape labor allocation and the diffusion of skills and technology. British Master and Servant law made employee contract breach a criminal offense until 1875. We develop a contracting model generating equilibrium contract breach and prosecutions, then exploit exogenous changes in output prices to examine the effects of labor demand shocks on prosecutions. Positive shocks in the textile, iron, and coal industries increased prosecutions. Following the abolition of criminal sanctions, wages differentially rose in counties that had experienced more prosecutions, and wages responded more to labor demand shocks. Coercive contract enforcement was applied in industrial Britain; restricted mobility allowed workers to commit to risk-sharing contracts with lower, but...	Suresh Naidu, Noam Yuchtman
8	—	This paper is closely related because it studies technology spillovers generated endogenously through labor mobility, which is central to your project’s focus on worker movement as a conduit for knowledge diffusion. It also analyzes how legal protection of trade secrets affects clustering and spillovers, making it relevant for understanding how policy and firm incentives shape the direction and intensity of technology transfer. We analyze firms' incentives to cluster in an industrial district to benefit from reciprocal technology spillovers. A simple model of cumulative innovation is presented, where technology spillovers arise endogenously through labor mobility. It is shown that firms' incentives to cluster are the strongest when the following three conditions are met: (1) the growth potential of an industry is high; (2) competition in the product market is relatively soft; (3) the probability of a single firm to develop an innovation is neither very high nor very low. Trade secret protection based on punitive damages is, except in some extreme cases, beneficial for firms' profits, stimulates clustering, and is...	Andréa Fosfuri, Thomas Rønde
8	2010	Recruitment Restrictions and Labor Markets: Evidence from the Postbellum U.S. South ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how recruitment restrictions affect worker mobility and wages, which is central to understanding labor market frictions that shape knowledge diffusion through labor movement. Although it focuses on sharecroppers rather than skilled workers or inventors, its on-the-job search framework and evidence on reduced mobility are useful for thinking about how restrictions on worker poaching can impede the transfer of human capital and technology. This article studies the effect of recruitment restrictions on mobility and wages in the postbellum U.S. South. I estimate the effects of criminal fines charged for “enticement” (recruiting workers already under contract) on sharecropper mobility, tenancy choice, and agricultural wages. I find that a $13 (10%) increase in the enticement fine lowered the probability of a move by black sharecroppers by 12%, daily wages by 1 cent (.1%), and the returns to experience for blacks by 0.6% per year. These results are consistent with an on‐the‐job search model, where the enticement fine raises the cost of recruiting an employed worker.	Suresh Naidu
8	2001	R&D and Technology Spillovers via FDI: Innovation and Absorptive Capacity ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it centers on R&D-driven technology spillovers and how foreign direct investment transmits knowledge across firms or countries, which is closely related to diffusion mechanisms. The main gap is that it appears to focus more on FDI and firm/country absorptive capacity than on worker mobility specifically, so the connection to labor-market frictions and inventor movement is indirect. No abstract available.	Yuko Kinoshita	Other
8	2017	Immigration and the Rise of American Ingenuity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility across borders as a channel for knowledge diffusion and innovation, using patent and census data to quantify how immigrant inventors shape technological progress. It is also relevant to firm and labor-market frictions because it documents an immigrant inventor wage gap unrelated to productivity, though it does not directly analyze non-competes, search frictions, or policy restrictions on worker movement. We build on the analysis in Akcigit, Grigsby, and Nicholas (2017) by using US patent and census data to examine the relationship between immigration and innovation. We construct a measure of foreign born expertise and show that technology areas where immigrant inventors were prevalent between 1880 and 1940 experienced more patenting and citations between 1940 and 2000. The contribution of immigrant inventors to US innovation was substantial. We also show that immigrant inventors were more productive than native born inventors; however, they received significantly lower levels of labor income. The immigrant inventor wage-gap cannot be explained by differentials in productivity.	Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas
8	2017	The Rise of American Ingenuity: Innovation and Inventors of the Golden Age ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors, patenting, and inventor migration as mechanisms shaping innovation and long-run growth, which are central to knowledge diffusion through worker movement. It also connects regional innovation to social mobility and local conditions, offering useful evidence on how the environment influences where inventive labor relocates and how technology spreads. We examine the golden age of U.S. innovation by undertaking a major data collection exercise linking historical U.S. patents to state and county-level aggregates and matching inventors to Federal Censuses between 1880 and 1940. We identify a causal relationship between patented inventions and long-run economic growth and outline a basic framework for analyzing key macro and micro-level determinants. We find a positive relationship between innovation and drivers of regional performance including population density, financial development and geographic connectedness. We also explore the impact of social structure measured by slavery and religion. We then profile the characteristics of...	Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas
8	2000	Wage and Technology Dispersion ↗ This paper is closely related because it links costly worker search to equilibrium wage dispersion, firm technology choice, and productivity differences across firms. While it does not focus on non-competes or inventor mobility, it directly speaks to how labor market frictions shape technology adoption, hiring, and the diffusion of productive practices through worker information and movement. This paper explains why firms with identical opportunities may use different technologies and offer different wages. Our key assumption is that workers must engage in costly search in order to gather information about jobs (Stigler (1961)). In equilibrium, some firms adopt high fixed cost, high productivity technologies, offer high wages, and fill job openings quickly. Other firms adopt less capital-intensive technologies and offer low wages, hiring mostly uninformed workers. In equilibrium, the amount of wage dispersion leaves workers indifferent about whether to gather information, and the fraction of informed workers leaves firms indifferent about their wage and technology choice. We...	Daron Acemoğlu, Robert Shimer
8	2002	Determinants of knowledge diffusion as evidenced in patent data: the case of liquid crystal display technology ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion through inventor mobility and changing organizational affiliations, using patent citations as evidence of spillovers. It directly speaks to how worker movement facilitates the flow of ideas across firms and geography, though it is focused on one industry rather than broader labor market frictions or aggregate productivity effects. This paper analyses the nature of knowledge spillovers from research and development (R&D) in the field of liquid crystal display (LCD) technology by estimating the impact of inventors' changing organizational and collaborative affiliations on the probability of citations in US patents filed between 1976 and 1995, while controlling for geographic localization effects. It is argued that technology policy towards a particular industry must take the role of inventors' mobility in facilitating the flow of ideas across space and innovating organizations into account. Policy implications for the display industry are discussed against the background of previous experiences with government...	Michael Stolpe
8	2005	Collaborative Networks as Determinants of Knowledge Diffusion Patterns ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion across inventors and firms, showing how interpersonal networks shape the flow of patent-based knowledge. It is especially relevant to the project’s interest in the mechanisms behind localized and within-firm spillovers, though it focuses more on network structure than on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility policies. This paper examines whether interpersonal networks help explain two widely documented patterns of knowledge diffusion: (1) geographic localization of knowledge flows, and (2) concentration of knowledge flows within firm boundaries. I measure knowledge flows using patent citation data, and employ a novel regression framework based on choice-based sampling to estimate the probability of knowledge flow between inventors of any two patents. As expected, intraregional and intrafirm knowledge flows are found to be stronger than those across regional or firm boundaries. I explore whether these patterns can be explained by direct and indirect network ties among inventors, as inferred from past...	Jasjit Singh
8	2008	Job hopping, earnings dynamics, and industrial agglomeration in the software publishing industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility within a high-tech industry and links industrial agglomeration to job hopping, earnings dynamics, and learning. Its evidence that clustering facilitates mobility and human capital formation speaks directly to how labor market structure affects knowledge diffusion, though it focuses more on agglomeration than on non-competes or inventor-specific spillovers. This paper investigates the implications of industrial clustering for labor mobility and earnings dynamics in one large and increasingly important high-technology sector. Taking advantage of longitudinal employee-employer matched data, I exploit establishment-level variation in agglomeration to explore how clustering in the software publishing industry affects labor market outcomes. The results show that clustering makes it easier for workers to job hop within the sector. Higher earnings levels in more agglomerated areas are partly attributable to sorting across locations among workers and firms in the industry on the basis of observable and unobservable characteristics. Controlling for...	Matthew Freedman
8	2023	What Happened to US Business Dynamism? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the decline in knowledge diffusion across firms, which is central to understanding how technology and ideas spread in the economy. Although it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its emphasis on endogenous firm dynamics, innovation, and frontier-to-laggard spillovers makes it highly relevant to the project. We attempt to understand potential common forces behind rising market concentration and a slowdown in business dynamism in the US economy, through a micro-founded general equilibrium model of endogenous firm dynamics. The model captures the strategic behavior between competing firms, its effect on their innovation decisions, and the resulting “best-versus-the-rest” dynamics. We consider multiple potential mechanisms that can drive the observed changes and use the calibrated model to assess their relative importance, with particular attention to the implied transitional dynamics. Our results highlight the dominant role of a decline in the intensity of knowledge diffusion from frontier firms...	Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates
8	2015	Engineer/scientist careers: Patents, online profiles, and misclassification bias ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies engineer and scientist mobility, a central mechanism in the project’s knowledge diffusion framework. It also speaks to how firms retain human capital and how measurement of inventor mobility can affect conclusions about mobility patterns and spillovers, though it is more about data accuracy and retention than diffusion or policy directly. Research summary : This article applies data from LinkedIn to advance strategy research into the effect of human capital on mobility of engineers and scientists. Through an inventor survey, we show that LinkedIn provides more accurate career histories than patents. Compared to LinkedIn , patent measures of mobility generate 12 percent false positives and 83 percent false negatives. Using LinkedIn , we review findings from previous research using patents to track the effect of human capital on mobility. One previous finding is robust: that mobility is higher in Silicon Valley than elsewhere. Other findings are possibly sensitive to the measure of mobility or sample selection. We interpret...	Chunmian Ge, Ke‐Wei Huang, Ivan Png
8	2011	Scientific Mobility and Knowledge Transfer at the Interregional and Intraregional Level ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the mobility of elite scientists generates interregional and intraregional knowledge flows, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility as a channel for technology diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding the mechanisms and conditions under which skilled-worker movement embeds knowledge in host regions and transfers it to local actors, though it is more descriptive than focused on labor-market frictions or policy impacts. Trippl M. Scientific mobility and knowledge transfer at the interregional and intraregional level, Regional Studies. The aim of this paper is to explore the extent and nature of knowledge flows which result from the international mobility of elite scientists. Based on the findings from a worldwide survey of ‘star scientists’ (that is, authors of highly cited journal articles in different research areas), it is shown that these top researchers establish manifold interregional knowledge links between their sending and receiving areas and embed themselves in their location of choice by creating connections to regional actors. Furthermore, the paper identifies a set of crucial factors that...	Michaela Trippl
8	2009	The pervasive absence of compensating differentials ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies job-to-job mobility, on-the-job search, and search frictions, all of which are central to how worker movement can transmit information and affect labor market dynamics. While it does not focus on technology diffusion or inventor mobility directly, its analysis of constrained mobility and frictions is useful background for understanding how labor market frictions shape worker reallocation and the broader diffusion process. Abstract We study the relation between individual preferences for job amenities (e.g., type of work, job security) and compensating wage differentials in cross‐section. To this end, we estimate a partial equilibrium job search model on panel data from eight European countries. There are five non‐wage job characteristics and two sources of job‐to‐job mobility: on‐the‐job search and reallocation shocks. We also allow for two types of unobserved heterogeneity. We find strong preferences for amenities, especially job security, yet, these preferences do not translate into significant wage differentials in cross‐section. Counterfactual experiments show that one would need extremely low levels of...	Stéphane Bonhomme, Grégory Jolivet
8	2020	Monopsony in Labor Markets: A Meta-Analysis ↗ This meta-analysis is closely related because monopsony and firm wage-setting power are central labor market frictions that affect worker mobility, retention, and the incentives for firms to poach or retain skilled workers. While it does not directly study knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its evidence on labor market institutions and worker responsiveness is highly relevant for understanding how mobility constraints can shape the transmission of knowledge across firms. When jobs offered by different employers are not perfect substitutes, employers gain wage-setting power; the extent of this power can be captured by the elasticity of labor supply to the firm. The authors collect 1,320 estimates of this parameter from 53 studies. Findings show a prominent discrepancy between estimates of direct elasticity of labor supply to changes in wage (smaller) and the estimates converted from inverse elasticities (larger), suggesting that labor market institutions may rein in a substantial amount of firm wage-setting power. This gap remains after they control for 22 additional variables and use Bayesian Model Averaging and LASSO to address model uncertainty; however...	Anna Sokolova, Todd Sørensen
8	2013	Localized Knowledge Spillovers and Patent Citations: A Distance-Based Approach ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies localized knowledge spillovers in innovation, which is central to how knowledge diffuses across firms and regions. However, it focuses on patent citation geography rather than worker mobility or labor market frictions, so it is more about the spatial pattern of spillovers than the mechanisms through which workers transmit knowledge. We develop a new distance-based test of localized knowledge spillovers that embeds the concept of control patents. Using microgeographic data, we identify localization distance for each technology class while allowing for spillovers across geographic units. We revisit the debate between Thompson and Fox-Kean (2005a, 2005b) and Henderson, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg (2005) on the existence of localized knowledge spillovers and find solid evidence supporting localization even when using finely grained controls. Unless biases induced by imperfect matching between citing and control patents due to unobserved heterogeneity are extremely large, our distance-based test detects localization for the...	Yasusada Murata, Ryo Nakajima, Ryosuke Okamoto, et al.
8	2004	DO FIRMS CHANGE CAPABILITIES BY HIRING NEW PEOPLE? A STUDY OF THE ADOPTION OF SCIENCE-BASED DRUG DISCOVERY ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how hiring star scientists changes firm capabilities and adoption of new technology, which is directly relevant to worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer. Its focus on scientist movement, the impact of new hires on existing employees, and firm-level capability upgrading speaks to knowledge diffusion and the role of labor mobility in innovation, though it is more about internal capability building than market-wide mobility frictions or policy. Do firms build new capabilities by hiring new people? We explore this question in the context of the pharmaceutical industry’s movement towards science-driven drug discovery. We focus particularly on the potential problem of endogeneity in interpreting correlation between hiring and changes in organizational outcomes as evidence of the impact of new hires on the firm, and on the more fundamental conceptual question of the conditions under which hiring might be a source of competitive advantage, given the well known objection that resources that are freely available through the market cannot be a source of differential capabilities. Using data on the movement and publication of “star”...	Nicola Lacetera, Iain Cockburn, Rebecca Henderson
8	2021	Noncompete Agreements in the US Labor Force ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies noncompete agreements, a key labor market friction in worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Its evidence on how enforceability and timing affect wages and employee outcomes is highly relevant to understanding how restrictions on movement shape technology spillovers and firm behavior, though it is more about labor-market outcomes than direct innovation or diffusion measures. Using nationally representative survey data on 11,505 labor force participants, we examine the use and implementation of noncompete agreements and the employee outcomes associated with these provisions. Approximately 18 percent of labor force participants are bound by noncompetes, with 38 percent having agreed to at least one in the past. Noncompetes are more likely to be found in high-skill, high-paying jobs, but they are also common in low-skill, low-paying jobs and in states where noncompetes are unenforceable. Only 10 percent of employees negotiate over their noncompetes, and about one-third of employees are presented with noncompetes after having already accepted job offers...	Evan Starr, J.J. Prescott, Norman Bishara
8	2018	Skilled migration and innovation in European industries ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how skilled worker mobility across countries affects innovation and knowledge creation, using patent citations as the outcome. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on the diffusion of technology through worker movement, though it is less directly about labor market frictions such as non-competes, search frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention policies. This paper studies the effects of skilled migration on innovation –proxied by patent citations- in European industries between 1994 and 2005, using the French and the UK Labour Force Surveys and the German Microcensus. Highly-educated migrants have a positive effect on innovation, but the effect differs across industries. It is stronger in industries with low levels of overeducation, high levels of FDIs and openness to trade and, finally, in industries with higher ethnic diversity. The aggregate effect of the skilled immigrant is about one third the one of the skilled natives. We tackle the endogeneity of migrants with a set of external and internal instruments.	Claudio Fassio, Fabio Montobbio, Alessandra Venturini
8	2017	Frontier Knowledge and Scientific Production: Evidence from the Collapse of International Science* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how disruptions to cross-border knowledge flows reduce scientific productivity and the translation of basic science into technological innovation. While it focuses on international scientific cooperation rather than worker mobility per se, it directly speaks to the broader question of how barriers to knowledge diffusion affect innovation and growth. We show that World War I and the subsequent boycott against Central scientists severely interrupted international scientific cooperation. After 1914, citations to recent research from abroad decreased and paper titles became less similar (evaluated by latent semantic analysis), suggesting a reduction in international knowledge flows. Reduced international scientific cooperation led to a decline in the production of basic science and its application in new technology. Specifically, we compare productivity changes for scientists who relied on frontier research from abroad, to changes for scientists who relied on frontier research from home. After 1914, scientists who relied on frontier...	Alessandro Iaria, Carlo Schwarz, Fabian Waldinger
8	2014	How anticipated employee mobility affects acquisition likelihood: Evidence from a natural experiment ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how anticipated employee mobility affects firm strategy and provides causal evidence that mobility constraints change acquisition behavior, which is directly relevant to labor market frictions and knowledge diffusion. Its focus is narrower than the core project since it emphasizes M&A likelihood rather than the broader effects of worker movement on technology transfer, innovation, and aggregate productivity. This study draws on strategic factor market theory and argues that acquirers' decisions regarding whether to bid for a firm reflect their expectations about employee departure from the firm post‐acquisition, suggesting a negative relationship between the anticipated employee departure from a firm and the likelihood of the firm becoming an acquisition target. Using a natural experiment and a difference‐in‐differences approach, we find causal evidence that constraints on employee mobility raise the likelihood of a firm becoming an acquisition target. The causal effect is stronger when a firm employs more knowledge workers in its workforce and when it faces greater in‐state competition; by...	Kenneth Younge, Tony W. Tong, Lee Fleming
8	2016	Spillovers in Space: Does Geography Matter? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the geographic mobility and location of inventors and R&D workers shape the diffusion of knowledge through spillovers across firms. It is especially relevant for understanding how local labor markets and the placement of researchers affect productivity and technology transfer, though it focuses more on spatial spillovers than on frictions like non-competes or search costs. Using U.S. firm level panel data we simultaneously assess the contributions to productivity of three potential sources of research and development spillovers: geographic, technological, and product market (“horizontal”). To do so, we construct new measures of geographic proximity based on the distribution of a firm's inventor locations as well as its headquarters. We find that geographic location is important for productivity, as are technology (but not product) spillovers, and that both intra and inter–regional (counties) spillovers matter. The geographic location of a firm's researchers is more important than its headquarters. These benefits may be the reason why local policy makers...	Sergey Lychagin, Joris Pinkse, Margaret E. Slade, et al.
8	2017	The Macrodynamics of Sorting between Workers and Firms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, worker-firm matching, and endogenous mobility decisions, all of which are central to understanding how worker movement affects the allocation of talent across firms. While it does not directly model knowledge diffusion or non-compete policies, its framework for sorting between heterogeneous workers and firms is highly relevant for analyzing how mobility frictions shape the transmission of skills and productivity. We develop an equilibrium model of on-the-job search with ex ante heterogeneous workers and firms, aggregate uncertainty, and vacancy creation. The model produces rich dynamics in which the distributions of unemployed workers, vacancies, and worker-firm matches evolve stochastically over time. We prove that the surplus function, which fully characterizes the match value and the mobility decision of workers, does not depend on these distributions. This result means the model is tractable and can be estimated. We illustrate the quantitative implications of the model by fitting to US aggregate labor market data from 1951–2012. The model has rich implications for the cyclical dynamics of the...	Jeremy Lise, Jean‐Marc Robin
8	2013	Making the Most of the Revolving Door: The Impact of Outward Personnel Mobility Networks on Organizational Creativity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer, focusing on how departures to competitors affect former employers’ creative performance through personnel mobility networks. Although the setting is fashion design rather than broader technology diffusion or labor market frictions like non-competes, it directly speaks to how moving workers transmit ideas and shape firm-level innovation outcomes. We examine the impact of key personnel’s loss to competition on their former employers’ creative performance. Using archival data on the career histories of designers and the creative performance of their fashion houses between 2000 and 2010, we find that a house’s outward centrality in the network of personnel mobility—resulting from personnel departures—has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the house’s creative performance. This relationship is moderated by the house’s inward centrality in a network of personnel mobility stemming from hiring competitors’ employees, the tenure of its creative directors, the accomplishments of these directors, and the house’s status. Our results...	Frédéric Godart, Andrew V. Shipilov, Kim Claes
8	2008	Firm innovation: The influence of R&D cooperation and the geography of human capital inputs ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how human capital mobility across firms transmits knowledge and affects firm innovation, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a diffusion mechanism. It is especially relevant for understanding the geography of labor inputs and inter-firm knowledge spillovers, though it is less directly about specific frictions like non-competes or search frictions. This paper investigates the role played by the geography of labor inputs in the promotion of innovation. Knowledge can be transferred between firms by inter-firm interactions and inter-firm cooperation. In addition, knowledge can also be transferred between firms by human capital mobility. In order to examine these issues we employ a unique innovation dataset from Finland. This dataset provides information about a firm's innovation performance along with information regarding the origins of a firm's recent labor acquisitions. The origins of the labor are defined according to both the industry and the region. Analyzing these data allows us to identify the different roles which the geography...	Jaakko Simonen, Philip McCann
8	2007	Desperately seeking spillovers? Increasing returns, industrial organization and the location of new entrants in geographic and technological space ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge spillovers shape where new firms locate, using the proximity of R&D employees and spending as evidence of localized diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding the geographic concentration of technology transfer and how firm/worker networks and industrial organization influence spillovers, though it focuses more on entrant location than worker mobility or labor market frictions. Using detailed data on Canadian biotechnology firms during the 1990s, we explore the geographic scope of knowledge spillovers and the balance spillover-seeking and expropriation-avoidance in entrants’ locations. Our findings indicate that knowledge spillovers are highly localized, with entrants attracted to incumbents’ R&D employees and spending within 500 m, but not further. We also find that two local contextual factors enhance the tendency toward spillover seeking. One is increasing returns to positive information externalities that accompany concentrations of technologically similar firms. The other is the entrepreneurial and open industrial organization that arises when incumbents with...	Barak S. Aharonson, Joel A. C. Baum, Maryann P. Feldman
8	1991	Covenants Not to Compete: A State-By-State Survey [Title only] This title is highly relevant because non-compete covenants are a central labor market friction affecting worker mobility, especially for skilled workers and inventors, which directly ties to knowledge diffusion and technology spillovers. A state-by-state survey suggests it may be primarily descriptive/legal rather than an economics model or empirical study of productivity effects, so it is relevant but not necessarily focused on the project’s broader growth and diffusion mechanisms. No abstract available.	Brian M. Malsberger
8	2014	Labour Market Externalities and Regional Growth in Sweden: The Importance of Labour Mobility between Skill-Related Industries ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labour mobility across skill-related industries affects regional productivity growth, directly speaking to worker movement as a channel for knowledge and technology diffusion. It is less directly about firm-level frictions like non-competes or inventor mobility, but it provides strong empirical evidence that labor flows shape growth and labor market outcomes in ways relevant to the project. Boschma R., Eriksson R. H. and Lindgren U. Labour market externalities and regional growth in Sweden: the importance of labour mobility between skill-related industries, Regional Studies. This study investigates the relationship between labour market externalities and regional growth based on real labour flows. In particular, it tests for the importance of labour mobility across so-called skill-related industries between 435 four-digit industries within 72 Swedish functional regions (1998–2002). Both the fixed-effect models and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimates demonstrate that a strong intensity of intra-regional labour flows between skill-related industries impacts positively...	Ron Boschma, Rikard Eriksson, Urban Lindgren
8	1999	Networks within Industrial Districts: Organising Knowledge Creation and Transfer by Means of Moderate Hierarchies ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly focuses on knowledge creation and transfer within industrial districts, which is central to understanding how information and technology diffuse across firms. The mention of networks and “moderate hierarchies” suggests an organizational and labor-market structure that could shape worker mobility, collaboration, and spillovers, though it is less directly about non-competes or formal mobility frictions. No abstract available.	Cristina Boari, Andrea Lipparini	Other
8	2010	Human mobility and international knowledge spillovers: evidence from high‐tech small and medium enterprises in an emerging market ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies human mobility as a channel for international knowledge spillovers, focusing on returnee entrepreneurs and MNE work experience as sources of innovation in high-tech firms. It is especially relevant to the project’s interest in how worker movement transfers knowledge across firms, though it emphasizes cross-border entrepreneurship and firm innovation rather than labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. Abstract Using novel survey data, we examine the relationship between returnee entrepreneurs, multinational enterprise (MNE) work experience of domestic entrepreneurs, and firms' innovation performance in high‐tech SMEs in China. We adopt an integrated framework that combines the knowledge‐based view and social capital theory to investigate whether human mobility across national borders and MNE work experience facilitate international knowledge spillovers. We find that firms founded by returnees are more innovative than their local counterparts. We also find that returnee firms have an indirect impact/spillover effect on non‐returnee firms' innovation performance and act as a new channel...	Xiaohui Liu, Mike Wright, Igor Filatotchev, et al.
8	1992	Sectoral Shifts and Interindustry Wage Differentials ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility frictions shape persistent wage differences across industries, with a direct focus on experienced workers who may be less able or willing to move. Its discussion of human capital, arbitrage by younger workers, and persistent industry shocks connects to the project’s themes of labor market frictions and the diffusion of knowledge through worker movement, though it does not directly analyze technology transfer or innovation. The observed differences in wages across industries may arise from a lack of worker mobility, particularly among experienced workers, allowing the effects of industry shocks to persist for some time. Although young workers arbitrage wage shocks, they will have little effect on the dispersion of experienced workers' wages if young and old workers are poor substitutes in production. This explanation is investigated using the five Censuses of Population between 1940 and 1980. The evidence strongly suggests that differences in pay are not temporary phenomena. The data provide some support for the role of human capital and ability.	Jean Helwege
8	2002	Human Capital and Technology Diffusion ↗ [Title only] The title directly points to the diffusion of technology through human capital, which is central to questions about worker mobility as a conduit for knowledge transfer across firms and regions. While it does not explicitly mention mobility frictions, non-competes, or inventor movement, it is highly likely to connect to spillovers, adoption, and labor-mediated diffusion mechanisms. No abstract available.	Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel	Other
8	2003	Knowledge Retention and Personnel Mobility: The Nondisruptive Effects of Inflows of Experience ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies personnel mobility across firms and borders as a channel for transferring tacit knowledge and skills, which is central to your project’s focus on worker-driven knowledge diffusion. It is also useful for understanding how firms absorb or retain knowledge after inflows of experienced workers, though it emphasizes retention of existing routines more than aggregate productivity, innovation, or labor market frictions like non-competes. Firms often bring in personnel from rivals to gain tacit knowledge and skills. Personnel new to a firm may broaden the firm's knowledge stock, but may not disrupt the firm's ways of organizing. Instead, personnel inflows may contribute to the retention of a firm's traditional ways of organizing. This study tracks the flow of personnel within and across organizational boundaries (intrafirm and interfirm flows) and geographic boundaries (local and cross-border flows) for multiunit banks operating in the Foreign Exchange Trade Industry from 1973–1993. We test how a firm's retention activity responds to inflows of personnel from different sources (e.g., intrafirm, interfirm, local, and...	Tammy L. Madsen, Elaine Mosakowski, Srilata Zaheer
8	2012	The Spatial Diffusion of Technology ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion directly, focusing on how human interactions and geographic distance shape the spread of technologies across locations. While it is not specifically about worker mobility, non-competes, or firm-level labor frictions, its mechanism of interpersonal interaction as a driver of diffusion is highly relevant to the project’s core theme of knowledge transmission. We study empirically technology diffusion across countries and over time. We find significant evidence that technology diffuses slower to locations that are farther away from adoption leaders. This effect is stronger across rich countries and also when measuring distance along the south-north dimension. A simple theory of human interactions can account for these empirical findings. The theory suggests that the effect of distance should vanish over time, a hypothesis that we confirm in the data, and that distinguishes technology from other flows like goods or investments. We then structurally estimate the model. The parameter governing the frequency of interactions is larger for newer and...	Diego Comín, Mikhail Dmitriev, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg
8	2005	The Contribution Of Skilled Immigration And International Graduate Students To U.S. Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the movement of skilled people across borders affects innovation and patenting, which is a key channel of knowledge diffusion in your project. It also has direct policy relevance for labor mobility constraints, showing that visa restrictions on foreign students and skilled immigrants can reduce inventive output. The impact of international students and skilled immigration in the United States on innovative activity is estimated using a model of idea generation. In the main specification a system of three equations is estimated, where dependent variables are total patent applications, patents awarded to U.S. universities, and patents awarded to other U.S. entities, each scaled by the domestic labor force. Results indicate that both international graduate students and skilled immigrants have a significant and positive impact on future patent applications, as well as on future patents awarded to university and nonuniversity institutions. The central estimates suggest that a 10 percent increase in the...	Gnanaraj Chellaraj, Keith E. Maskus, Aaditya Mattoo
8	2017	Screening Spinouts? How Noncompete Enforceability Affects the Creation, Growth, and Survival of New Firms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies noncompete enforceability as a labor-market friction that shapes spinout formation, firm growth, and survival, which are central mechanisms in worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how restrictions on worker movement affect the entry and quality of new firms, though it focuses more on entrepreneurship outcomes than on direct knowledge spillovers or aggregate productivity. This paper examines how the enforceability of noncompete covenants affects the creation, growth, and survival of spinouts and other new entrants. The impact of noncompete enforceability on new firms is ambiguous, since noncompetes reduce knowledge leakage but impose hiring costs. However, we posit that enforceability screens formation of within-industry spinouts (WSOs) relative to non-WSOs by dissuading founders with lower human capital. Using data on 5.5 million new firms, we find greater enforceability is associated with fewer WSOs, but relative to non-WSOs, WSOs that are created tend to start and stay larger, are founded by higher-earners, and are more likely to survive their initial...	Evan Starr, Natarajan Balasubramanian, Mariko Sakakibara
8	2006	National institutions, public–private knowledge flows, and innovation performance: A comparative study of the biotechnology industry in the US and France ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how institutions shape knowledge flows between public science and private firms, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and innovation performance. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs, its emphasis on scientific careers, boundary-spanning researchers, and the transfer of human capital across organizations makes it highly relevant to the project. The biotechnology industry is a striking example of the disconnect between the location of knowledge creation and its commercial development. I argue that national technological performance in biotechnology is critically affected by institutions governing scientific careers, which shape the professional identities and boundary-spanning activities of research scientists. I test this in a comparison of the United States and France. Drawing on fieldwork and analysis of patent data, I compare institutional frameworks and estimate models of forward patent citations. The models show that entrepreneurial firms are associated with high-performing innovations in this sector whereas large established...	Michelle Gittelman
8	2014	The evolution of networks of innovators within and across borders: Evidence from patent data ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies inventor mobility, co-inventorship, and patent citations as channels of knowledge diffusion, which are central to understanding how worker movement spreads technology across firms and regions. It also examines how distance and borders shape these networks over time, offering evidence on frictions that affect the rate and direction of knowledge transfer. Recent studies on the geography of knowledge networks have documented a negative impact of physical distance and institutional borders upon research and development (R&D) collaborations. Though it is widely recognized that geographic constraints and national borders impede the diffusion of knowledge, less attention has been devoted to the temporal evolution of these constraints. In this study we use data on patents filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) for OECD countries to analyze the impact of physical distance and country borders on inter-regional links in four different networks over the period 1988–2009: (1) co-inventorship, (2) patent citations, (3) inventor mobility and (4) the...	Andrea Morescalchi, Fabio Pammolli, Orion Penner, et al.
8	2007	Listen to Me, Learn with Me: International Migration and Knowledge Transfer ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on migrant knowledge transfer as a mechanism for diffusion across firms, which aligns with the project’s core interest in worker mobility and knowledge spillovers. It is especially relevant for its discussion of barriers to transfer and the distinction between intra-firm and inter-firm mobility, though it is more conceptual and centered on international migration than on labor market frictions or innovation outcomes. Abstract Existing research on the economic contribution of individual international labour migrants has been couched largely in terms of skills, and has focused on mobility within transnational corporations. This article explores some of the broader links between the literatures on international migration and management, and addresses four main questions: is migrant knowledge selective, is it distinctive, what are the barriers to migrant knowledge transfer and what are the implications for individual migrants and firms. This largely conceptual review is informed by three main premises: the value of adopting a knowledge as opposed to a skills perspective on migration; the importance of...	Allan M. Williams
8	2018	Experience matters: The role of academic scientist mobility for industrial innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer from academia to industry and its effect on firm innovation output. It also speaks to how firm-level hiring and organizational conditions shape the productivity of mobile skilled workers, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through labor markets. Research Summary: A learning‐by‐hiring approach is used to scrutinize scientists' mobility in relation to the recruiting firms' subsequent innovation output. Our starting point is that among firm hires, individuals with university research experience—hired from universities or firms—can be particularly valuable. However, conflicting institutional logics between academia and industry makes working with academic scientists challenging at times for firms. We suggest two solutions to this difficulty: hiring “ambidextrous” individuals with a mix of experience of university research and working for a technologically advanced firm, and a strong organizational research culture in the recruiting...	Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, Keld Laursen, et al.
8	2005	Innovation, knowledge spillovers and local labour markets ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a focus on how innovation interacts with knowledge spillovers, which is central to understanding how ideas move across firms and workers. The explicit emphasis on local labour markets also makes it likely to speak to worker mobility, spatial diffusion of knowledge, and labor market frictions affecting technology transfer. No abstract available.	Philip McCann, Jaakko Simonen
8	2013	Do non‐competition agreements lead firms to pursue risky R&D projects? ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how non-compete enforcement affects worker mobility and, through that channel, the direction and nature of firms’ R&D and invention outcomes. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and knowledge diffusion, though it emphasizes risk-taking and novelty in R&D more than diffusion across firms. This study investigates the impact of non‐competition agreements on the type of R&D activity undertaken by companies. Non‐competition agreements, by reducing outbound mobility and knowledge leakages to competitors, make high‐risk R&D projects relatively more valuable than low‐risk ones. Thus, they induce companies to choose riskier R&D projects, such that corporate inventions are more likely to lie in the tails of the inventions' value distribution (as breakthroughs or failures) and be in novel technological areas. This study uses data about U.S. patent applications from 1990 to 2000 and considers longitudinal variation in the enforcement of non‐compete clauses. The results indicate that in...	Raffaele Conti
8	2013	The Globalization of Technology in Emerging Markets: A Gravity Model on the Determinants of International Patent Collaborations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies international patent collaborations as a channel of knowledge diffusion, which is central to understanding how technology moves across firms and countries. Its focus on technological proximity, communication costs, and IPRs also speaks to frictions that shape the direction and intensity of knowledge transfer, although it is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions. International technological collaborations (ITCs) and face-to-face interactions are an important vehicle of knowledge diffusion. This paper analyzes ITCs among USPTO patents' inventors in eleven emerging economies and seven advanced countries (1990-2004) and a novel database on companies' country of origin. Technological proximity and sharing a common language are key drivers of ITCs. When the applicant's ownership is in the emerging country ITCs depend positively upon transport and communication costs (geographical distance and longitude) and negatively upon the strength of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Stronger IPRs positively affect ITCs from subsidiaries of multinational firms. ©...	Fabio Montobbio, Valério Sterzi
8	2020	Efficiency wages as gift exchange: Evidence from corporate innovation in China ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how wages and labor-market conditions affect firms’ ability to retain and attract skilled workers, which in turn shapes innovation outcomes and productivity growth. While it does not focus on worker mobility frictions like non-competes or inventor movement directly, its emphasis on human capital retention, local labor market competition, and innovation diffusion mechanisms fits the project’s core themes. Abstract This paper investigates the impact of rank-and-file employees on corporate innovation. We show that paying higher relative wages to rank-and-file employees promotes better innovation outcomes in terms of patent quantity and quality. This effect is more significant among firms with large proportions of skilled employees, industries with high levels of R&D intensity, provinces with competitive local labor markets, and non-SOEs. Further analyses reveal that efficiency wages can serve as an underlying economic channel that fosters innovation by retaining and attracting valuable human capital and stimulating their working enthusiasm. Finally, we show that technological innovation is a...	Dongmin Kong, Yanan Wang, Jian Zhang
8	2005	An Empirical Model of Growth Through Product Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies growth through product innovation in an equilibrium model where worker reallocation across firms contributes to productivity growth. Although it does not focus specifically on non-competes, inventor mobility, or labor market frictions, its emphasis on firm dynamics, worker movement, and aggregate innovation effects aligns well with the project’s core themes. Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to estimate the structure of an equilibrium model of growth through innovation. The model is a modified version of the Schumpeterian theory of firm evolution and growth developed by Klette and Kortum (2002). The data set is a panel of Danish firms than includes information on value added, employment, and wages. The model’s fit is good and the structural parameter estimates have interesting implications for the aggregate growth rate and the contribution of worker reallocation to it.	Rasmus Lentz, Dale T. Mortensen
8	2013	Can Opportunity Emerge From Disarray? An Examination of Exploration and Exploitation Following Star Scientist Turnover ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the turnover of star scientists affects firm innovation, including the tradeoff between exploitation and exploration after a key worker exits. It speaks directly to worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge reallocation and diffusion, though it focuses more on internal innovation responses than on cross-firm spillovers, labor market frictions, or policy constraints on mobility. How do the specific characteristics of a departing star influence the effects of the star’s turnover on a firm’s innovation processes? Proposing a contingency model of key employee turnover, we argue and demonstrate that the individual characteristics of a star scientist who exits a firm determine the effects of the star’s turnover for the organization. Based on a longitudinal study of star scientist turnover in the biotechnology industry (1972-2003), we show that while star turnover disrupts existing innovation routines and thus decreases exploitation, this “shock” creates opportunities for the firm to search beyond existing knowledge boundaries, thereby increasing exploration. However...	Daniel Tzabbar, Rebecca R. Kehoe
8	2006	The "Names Game": Harnessing Inventors' Patent Data for Economic Research ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it provides the inventor-level patent data infrastructure needed to study worker mobility, employer changes, and co-inventor networks as channels of knowledge diffusion. Although it is primarily a methods paper rather than a substantive analysis of mobility frictions or productivity effects, its ability to track inventors across firms and countries makes it directly useful for research on technology transfer and innovation spillovers. The goal of this paper is to lay out a methodology and corresponding computer algorithms, that allow us to extract the detailed data on inventors contained in patents, and harness it for economic research. Patent data has long been used in empirical research in economics, and yet the information on the identity (i.e. the names and location) of the patents' inventors has seldom been deployed in a large scale, primarily because of the "who is who" problem: the name of a given inventor may be spelled differently across her/his patents, and the exact same name may correspond to different inventors (i.e. the "John Smith" problem). Given that there are over 2 million patents with 2 inventors per...	Manuel Trajtenberg, Gil Shiff, Ran Melamed
8	2023	Patent Publication and Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how faster disclosure of patents affects technology diffusion, follow-on innovation, and duplication in R&D, which is central to understanding knowledge spillovers. While it focuses on patent publication rather than worker mobility or labor-market frictions, the mechanisms and outcomes it analyzes map directly onto the broader project’s interest in how knowledge spreads and how firms adjust innovative effort in response. We measure how patent publication affects innovation by exploiting the American Inventor’s Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA), which accelerated public disclosure of US patents by about 1.5 years. We obtain causal estimates by comparing US patents subject to AIPA with “twin” European patents that were not. Post-AIPA, US patents receive more and faster follow-on citations, indicating greater technology diffusion. Technological overlap increases between distant but related patents and decreases between highly similar patents, and patent applications are less likely to be abandoned, suggesting less duplicative R&D. Publicly listed firms exposed to 1 standard deviation longer patent grant delays...	Deepak Hegde, Kyle Herkenhoff, Chenqi Zhu
8	2003	Convergence and polarization in global income levels: a review of recent results on the role of international technology diffusion ↗ This review is closely related because it focuses on technology diffusion through cross-border interactions and emphasizes that tacit knowledge often moves via people and face-to-face contact, which connects to worker mobility as a diffusion mechanism. However, it is broader than the project’s main focus on labor market frictions, non-competes, and firm-level mobility decisions, since it centers on international diffusion rather than employee movement across firms within labor markets. We review the recent literature on technological change and diffusion to shed new light on the evolution of the world's cross-country income distribution. Technology is viewed as non-rival knowledge in the sense that firms in more than one country can simultaneously use it. R&D investments generate often also a return outside the innovating firm itself; these knowledge externalities are called technology spillovers. We emphasize that technology is to some extent tacit, and technology diffusion often involves the face-to-face interaction of people. Our paper reviews the evidence on whether international trade, foreign direct investment, and other cross-border activities are important for...	Guan Gong, Wolfgang Keller
8	2020	Laggard firms, technology diffusion and its structural and policy determinants ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion, productivity convergence, and barriers to knowledge transfer across firms, which are central to understanding how worker mobility and frictions shape diffusion. It is especially relevant in its discussion of skill intensity, absorptive capacity, and policy levers that affect catch-up, though it does not focus directly on worker mobility, non-competes, or inventor flows. This paper provides new evidence on the main characteristics of laggard firms - firms in the bottom 40% of the productivity distribution - and their potential for productivity growth. It finds that laggards are on average younger and smaller than more productive firms, and matter for aggregate resource reallocation. Moreover, younger laggards converge faster toward the productivity frontier, suggesting that the composition of the laggard group matters for future productivity. Yet this report finds that laggards converge at a slower rate in highly digital- and skill-intensive industries, suggesting that there are barriers to technology and knowledge diffusion. This could help explain the...	Giuseppe Berlingieri, Sara Calligaris, Chiara Criscuolo, et al.
8	2012	Law and Innovation: Evidence from State Trade Secrets Laws ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how intellectual property rules affect the diffusion of knowledge through disclosure and follow-on innovation, which is central to understanding technology spillovers. It is not primarily about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but its analysis of cumulative innovation, knowledge transmission, and welfare effects from constrained diffusion is highly relevant to the project. We use exogenous variation in the strength of trade secrets protection to show that a relative weakening of patents (compared to trade secrets) has a disproportionately negative effect on the disclosure of processes - inventions that are not otherwise visible to society. We develop a structural model of initial and follow-on innovation to determine the effects of such a shift in disclosure on overall welfare in industries characterized by cumulative innovation. We find that while stronger trade secrets encourage investment in R&D, they may have negative e ects on overall welfare - the result of a significant decline in follow-on innovation.	Ivan Png
8	2001	Covenants Not to Compete from an Incomplete Contracts Perspective ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because covenants not to compete are a central labor-market friction that directly affects worker mobility, knowledge transfer, and technology diffusion across firms. The incomplete contracts perspective also suggests it may analyze how contract incompleteness shapes incentive, retention, and innovation outcomes, which is closely aligned with the project’s focus, though the exact emphasis on mobility-driven spillovers is uncertain from the title alone. No abstract available.	Eric A. Posner, George G. Triantis
8	2008	Localized mobility clusters: impacts of labour market externalities on firm performance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility across firms generates labor-market externalities that improve firm performance, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through employee movement. It is especially relevant because it distinguishes mobility networks from simple co-location and shows that local job mobility has stronger effects than agglomeration, directly informing how labor market frictions or mobility policy may shape technology spillovers and productivity. This article analyses the impact of labour market-induced externalities on firm performance by using a unique database that connects attributes of individuals to workplaces for the entire Swedish economy. Based on the analysis of 256,985 workplaces, our results show that firms belonging to networks of local job mobility (i.e. ‘localized mobility clusters’) significantly outperform other similar firms within the local labour market. The results also indicate that concentrations of similar and related firms do not explain any considerable part of the variations in firm competitiveness. Labour market externalities derived via local job mobility produce significantly more powerful effects for...	Rikard Eriksson, Urban Lindgren
8	2013	The spill-over theory reversed: The impact of regional economies on the commercialization of university science ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor and scientist networks connect university knowledge to industry commercialization, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through worker mobility and personal contacts. It does not focus directly on labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs, but it provides important evidence on how regional social networks and inventor ties shape technology transfer and innovation outcomes. The concept of regional technology spill-overs created by university research is one of the most enduring theories within the economic geography and innovation management fields. This article introduces an alternative perspective on academic commercialization, arguing that the quality of a university's regional environment can significantly impact a university's success in commercializing science. Recent research on university technology transfer stresses the importance of personal contacts between academic and industry scientists in driving commercialization. The social structure of the regional economy in which a university is embedded will strongly influence the density of contacts...	Steven Casper
8	2007	THE EVOLUTION OF INVENTOR NETWORKS IN THE SILICON VALLEY AND BOSTON REGIONS ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility and how labor movement across firms helps create regional knowledge networks, especially in Silicon Valley. Its focus on contingent labor mobility as a driver of inter-organizational networking directly speaks to technology diffusion through worker movement, though it is more about network formation than formal policy analysis of frictions like non-competes. While networks are widely thought to enhance regional innovative capability, there exist few longitudinal studies of their formation and evolution over time. Based on an analysis of all patenting inventors in the U.S. from 1975 to 2002, we observe dramatic aggregation of the regional inventor network in Silicon Valley around 1989. Based on network statistics, we argue that the sudden rise of giant networks in Silicon Valley can be understood as a phase transition during which small isolated networks form one giant component. By contrast, such a transition in Boston occurred much later and much less dramatically. We do not find convincing evidence that this marked difference between the two...	Lee Fleming, Koen Frenken
8	2022	Estimating Spillovers from Publicly Funded R&D: Evidence from the US Department of Energy ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies R&D spillovers and how knowledge generated by funded firms diffuses to other firms, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and productivity spillovers. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its measures of geographic and technological spillovers provide useful evidence on how knowledge spreads across firms and industries. We quantify the magnitude of R&D spillovers created by grants to small firms from the US Department of Energy. Our empirical strategy leverages variation due to state-specific matching policies, and we develop a new approach to measuring both geographic and technological spillovers that does not rely on an observable paper trail. Our estimates suggest that for every patent produced by grant recipients, three more are produced by others who benefit from spillovers. Sixty percent of these spillovers occur within the United States, and many of them occur in technological areas substantially different from those targeted by the grants. (JEL H81, L25, O33, O34, Q40)	Kyle Myers, Lauren Lanahan
8	2018	Cyclical Job Ladders by Firm Size and Firm Wage ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility across firms as a mechanism for progressing to higher-wage employers, which is central to understanding how labor market frictions shape matching and reallocation. Its evidence on cyclical collapse of upward mobility also speaks to how search frictions and labor-market conditions affect the direction and quality of worker flows, though it is less directly about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility. We study whether workers progress up firm wage and size job ladders, and the cyclicality of this movement. Search theory predicts that workers should flow toward larger, higher paying firms. However, we see little evidence of a firm size ladder, partly because small, young firms poach workers from all other businesses. In contrast, we find strong evidence of a firm wage ladder that is highly procyclical. During the Great Recession, this firm wage ladder collapsed, with net worker reallocation to higher wage firms falling to zero. The earnings consequences from this lack of upward progression are sizable. (JEL D22, E24, E32, J31, J63, J64, L25)	John Haltiwanger, Henry R. Hyatt, Lisa Kahn, et al.
8	2015	Immigration and Ideas: What Did Russian Scientists “Bring” to the United States? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how high-skilled worker mobility, specifically immigrant scientists, transmits knowledge and increases citations to prior work in the destination country. It speaks directly to technology and idea diffusion through labor movement, though it is more about immigration-driven spillovers than frictions like non-competes or firm-level hiring and retention decisions. This paper examines how high-skilled immigrants contribute to knowledge diffusion using a rich data set of Russian scientists and US citations to Soviet-era publications. Analysis of a panel of US cities and scientific fields shows that citations to Soviet-era work increased significantly with the arrival of immigrants. A difference-in-differences analysis with matched paper pairs also shows that after Russian scientists moved to the United States, citations to their Soviet-era papers increased relative to control papers. Both strategies reveal scientific field–specific effects. Ideas in high-impact papers and papers previously accessible to US scientists were the most likely to “spill...	Ina Ganguli
8	2011	Individual scientific collaborations and firm-level innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a concrete channel of knowledge diffusion into firms through scientists’ external collaborations, which can enhance patenting and innovation. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it is highly relevant for understanding how individual-level interactions and spillovers transmit knowledge across organizational boundaries. Our article focuses on the role of interorganizational collaborations by biotechnology scientists (as captured by co-authorship of research papers) and their impact on the patented innovations of firms. Our results show that even after controlling for factors that have been previously suggested to impact the patent output of a firm, including the firm’s strategic alliances, star and nonstar scientists, individual-level scientific ability, and R&D investment, the extent to which a firm’s scientists collaborate externally on scientific articles positively influences the firm’s innovation. We also find that individual collaborations between firm and university researchers are particularly...	Paulo Almeida, Jan Hohberger, Pedro Parada
8	2010	ON‐THE‐JOB SEARCH, PRODUCTIVITY SHOCKS, AND THE INDIVIDUAL EARNINGS PROCESS* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search and wage renegotiation as mechanisms shaping worker mobility and labor-market dynamics for highly educated workers. While it does not directly analyze knowledge diffusion or firm-level spillovers, its structural treatment of mobility frictions and earnings dynamics is highly relevant to understanding how worker movement affects technology transfer and labor market outcomes. Individual labor earnings observed in worker panel data have complex, highly persistent dynamics. We investigate the capacity of a structural job search model with on‐the‐job search, wage renegotiation by mutual consent, and i.i.d. productivity shocks to replicate salient properties of these dynamics, such as the covariance structure of earnings, the evolution of individual earnings mean, and variance with the duration of uninterrupted employment, or the distribution of year‐to‐year earnings changes. Structural estimation of our model on a 12‐year panel of highly educated British workers shows that our simple framework produces a dynamic earnings structure that is remarkably consistent with...	Fabien Postel‐Vinay, Hélène Turon
8	2019	Destructive Creation at Work: How Financial Distress Spurs Entrepreneurship ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for reallocating knowledge and talent from distressed incumbents into new firms, which is central to understanding diffusion and innovation. It also directly speaks to labor market frictions through noncompete enforceability and shows how mobility affects entrepreneurial entry, startup quality, and aggregate reallocation. Using U.S. Census firm-worker data, I document that firms' financial distress has an economically important effect on employee departures to entrepreneurship. The impact is amplified in the high-tech and service sectors, where employees are key assets. In states with enforceable noncompete contracts, the effect is mitigated. Compared to typical entrepreneurs, distress-driven entrepreneurs are high-wage workers who found better firms, as measured by jobs, pay, and survival. Startup jobs compensate for 33% of job losses at the constrained incumbents. Overall, the financial inability of incumbent firms to pursue productive opportunities increases the reallocation of economic activity into new...	Tania Babina
8	1998	Research, Development, and Engineering Metrics ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms manage R&D and how metrics shape research effort, project selection, and the flow of ideas across organizational boundaries. Its discussion of “research tourism,” spillovers from universities and competitors, and the role of incentives and organizational frictions connects directly to knowledge diffusion, though it focuses more on internal management than worker mobility per se. We seek to understand how the use of Research, Development, and Engineering (R,D&E) metrics can lead to more effective management of R,D&E. This paper combines qualitative and quantitative research to understand and improve the use of R,D&E metrics. Our research begins with interviews of 43 representative Chief Technical Officers, Chief Executive Offices, and researchers at 10 research-intensive international organizations. These interviews, and an extensive review of the literature, provide qualitative insights. Formal mathematical models attempt to explore these qualitative insights based on more general principles. Our research suggests that metrics-based evaluation and management vary...	John R. Hauser	Other
8	2009	Identifying the age profile of patent citations: new estimates of knowledge diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies patent citations as a measure of knowledge diffusion and develops an identification strategy to estimate how knowledge flows evolve over time. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, the citation-age profile it estimates is relevant for understanding the timing and persistence of technology spillovers that may be transmitted through inventors and firms. Abstract Previous research studies the age profile of patent citations to learn about knowledge flows over time. However, identification is problematic because of the collinearity between application year, citation year, and patent age. We show empirically that a patent's ‘citation clock’ does not start until it issues, and propose a highly flexible identification strategy that uses the lag between application and grant as a source of exogenous variation. We examine the potential bias if our assumptions are incorrect, and discuss extensions into other research areas. Finally, we use our method to re‐examine prior results on citation age profiles of patents from different technological...	Aditi Mehta, Marc Rysman, Tim Simcoe
8	2006	Chapter 2 On-the-Job Search and Strategic Bargaining ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a labor-search model centered on workers finding better jobs while employed, which is directly relevant to worker mobility and the frictions that shape movement across firms. Strategic bargaining is also likely to matter for wage-setting and retention, making the chapter potentially useful for understanding how mobility affects knowledge diffusion, though the title does not explicitly mention technology transfer or innovation. No abstract available.	Robert Shimer
8	2003	Global gatekeeping, representation, and network structure: a longitudinal analysis of regional and global knowledge-diffusion networks ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of knowledge diffusion networks, including how regional and global structure affects the flow of information, which is directly relevant to your project’s focus on technology and knowledge diffusion. The terms "gatekeeping" and "representation" may indicate mechanisms that shape who transmits knowledge and how network position influences diffusion, though it does not explicitly mention worker mobility or labor-market frictions. No abstract available.	Jennifer W. Spencer
8	2002	Human capital and technology diffusion This paper is closely related because it studies how human capital conditions the diffusion of technology and productivity growth across countries, which speaks directly to the mechanisms of knowledge transfer in your project. While it is not about worker mobility or labor market frictions, its focus on human capital thresholds and cross-country technology catch-up provides useful background on how knowledge diffusion can be delayed or accelerated. This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology diffusion can be exponential, which would predict that nations would exhibit positive catch-up with the leader nation, or logistic, in which a country with a sufficiently small capital stock may exhibit slower total factor productivity growth than the leader nation.We derive a nonlinear specification for total factor productivity growth that nests these two specifications. We estimate this specification for a cross-section of nations from 1960 through 1995. Our results support the logistic specification, and are robust to a number of sensitivity...	Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel
8	2016	Entrepreneurship and growth: lessons from an intellectual journey ↗ This paper is closely related because it develops a Schumpeterian growth framework centered on innovation, creative destruction, and the role of policies and institutions in shaping entrepreneurial incentives. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or knowledge diffusion through labor market frictions, its emphasis on firm dynamics, incumbent-versus-entrant conflict, and growth policy makes it highly relevant background for the project. This lecture is the story of an intellectual journey, that of elaborating a new—Schumpeterian—theory of economic growth. A theory where (i) growth is generated by innovative entrepreneurs; (ii) entrepreneurial investments respond to incentives that are themselves shaped by economic policies and institutions; (iii) new innovations replace old technologies: in other words, growth involves creative destruction and therefore involves a permanent conflict between incumbents and new entrants. First, we motivate and then lay out the Schumpeterian paradigm and point to a set of empirical predictions which distinguish this paradigm from other growth models. Second, we raise four debates on which the...	Philippe Aghion
8	2006	DIRECTED SEARCH ON THE JOB AND THE WAGE LADDER* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, directed matching, and wage ladders, all of which are central to how worker mobility shapes the allocation of labor across firms. While it does not directly model knowledge diffusion or innovation spillovers, its search-friction framework is highly relevant for understanding how mobility frictions affect worker reallocation and firm hiring dynamics. We model a labor market where employed workers search on the job and firms direct workers' search using wage offers and employment probabilities. Applicants observe all offers and face a trade‐off between wage and employment probability. There is wage dispersion among workers, even though all workers and jobs are homogeneous. Equilibrium wages form a ladder, as workers optimally choose to climb the ladder one rung at a time. This is because low‐wage applicants are relatively more sensitive to employment probability than to wage and thus forgo the opportunity to apply for a high wage, with a lower chance of success.	Alain Delacroix, Shouyong Shi
8	2000	Geographical Localization of International Technology Diffusion ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of how technology spreads across places, which is closely related to diffusion mechanisms and the role of geographic frictions in transmitting knowledge. While it does not explicitly mention worker mobility or labor-market frictions, international technology diffusion and localization are highly relevant to the broader question of how knowledge moves between firms and regions. No abstract available.	Wolfgang Keller
8	2009	Monopsonistic discrimination, worker turnover, and the gender wage gap ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker turnover, labor supply elasticity, and monopsonistic frictions as determinants of wage setting, which are central to understanding how mobility constraints shape labor market outcomes. While it focuses on gender wage gaps rather than technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its matched employer-employee framework and emphasis on frictions in worker flows are highly relevant to the project’s broader interest in labor market frictions and mobility costs. Motivated by models of worker flows, we argue in this paper that monopsonistic discrimination may be a substantial factor behind the overall gender wage gap. On matched employer-employee data from Norway, we estimate establishment-specific wage premiums separately for men and women, conditioning on fixed individual effects. Regressions of worker turnover on the wage premium identify less wage elastic labour supply facing each establishment of women than that of men. Workforce gender composition is strongly related to employers' wage policies. The results suggest that 70-90 percent of the gender wage gap for low-educated workers may be attributed to differences in labour market frictions...	Erling Barth, Harald Dale‐Olsen
8	2013	The effect of intra- and inter-regional labour mobility on plant performance in Denmark: the significance of related labour inflows ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility affects firm/plant productivity through the transfer of skills, which is central to knowledge diffusion. Its focus on related versus similar skill inflows and intra- versus inter-regional mobility is useful for understanding how labor market frictions shape the direction and quality of spillovers, though it is not specifically about non-competes, inventors, or aggregate innovation policy. This article investigates the impact of labour mobility on plant performance in Denmark. \nOur study shows that the effect of labour mobility can only be assessed when one accounts \nfor the type of skills that flow into the plant and the degree to which these match the \nexisting skills at the plant level. As expected, we found that the inflow of skills that are \nrelated to skills in the plant impacts positively on plant productivity growth, while inflows of \nskills that are similar to the plant skills have a negative effect. We used a sophisticated \nindicator of revealed relatedness that measures the degree of skill relatedness between \nsectors on the basis of the intensity of labour...	Bram Timmermans, Ron Boschma
8	2020	Patents and knowledge diffusion: The effect of early disclosure ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a policy change that speeds patent disclosure and measures how that affects knowledge diffusion through patent citations, directly connecting to technology spillovers. It is especially relevant for understanding the mechanisms and limits of diffusion, though it focuses more on codified information disclosure than on worker mobility or labor-market frictions. We study how the timing of information disclosure affects the diffusion of codified technical information. On November 29, 2000, the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA) reduced the default publication time of patents at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to 18 months. We analyze the effects of this change by means of a regression discontinuity design with time as an assignment variable and a complementary difference-in-differences analysis. Our study shows that information flows from patents measured by forward citations, increased. Interestingly, the degree of localization within geographic boundaries remained unchanged and technological localization even increased...	Stefano Horst Baruffaldi, Markus Simeth
8	2003	To match or not to match? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, wage-setting, and firms’ retention policies, all of which are central to how labor market frictions shape worker mobility. Although it does not focus on knowledge diffusion or inventors directly, the matching-versus-nonmatching equilibrium is highly relevant for understanding how mobility incentives and firm policies affect movement across firms and the allocation of workers. We consider an equilibrium search model with on-the-job search where firms set wages. When an employee receives an outside job offer, it is optimal for the employer to try to retain the employee by matching the offer. This results in a wage increase for the worker. However, if workers are able to vary their search intensity, then this 'offer-matching' policy runs into a moral hazard problem. Knowing that outside offers lead to wage increases, workers tend to search more intensively, which is costly for the firms. Assuming that firms can commit never to match outside offers, we examine the set of firm types for which it is preferable to do so. In particular, we show that a plausible pattern...	Fabien Postel‐Vinay, Jean‐Marc Robin
8	1999	Inventive Activity and the Market for Technology in the United States, 1840-1920 ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the market for technology and tradable patent rights affected inventive activity and the specialization of inventors, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion and innovation dynamics. While it focuses more on patent markets than worker mobility per se, its emphasis on how institutions shape the production and spread of technology makes it highly relevant to the project. The growth of the U.S. economy over the nineteenth century was characterized by a sharp acceleration in the rate of inventive activity and a dramatic rise in the relative importance of highly specialized inventors as generators of new technological knowledge. Relying on evidence compiled from patent records, we argue that the evolution of a market for technology played a central role in these developments. Across both individuals and geographic areas, the expansion of opportunities to trade in patent rights was closely associated with increases in specialization at invention, as well as advances in rates of invention more generally. The patent system is often celebrated for the stimulus to...	Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Kenneth L. Sokoloff
8	2009	Lobbies and Technology Diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how institutional barriers created by lobbies slow the diffusion of new technologies across countries over time. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor-market frictions specifically, it speaks directly to technology diffusion, barriers to adoption, and development impacts, which are central to the project. This paper explores whether lobbies slow down technology diffusion. To answer this question, we exploit the differential effect of various institutional attributes that should affect the costs of erecting barriers when the new technology has a technologically close predecessor but not otherwise. We implement this test using a data set that covers the diffusion of twenty technologies for 23 countries over the past two centuries. We find that each of the relevant institutional variables that affect the costs of erecting barriers has a significantly larger effect on the diffusion of technologies with a competing predecessor technology than when no such technology exists. These effects are...	Diego Comín, Bart Hobijn
8	2008	Identification of Search Models using Record Statistics ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies search models of wage determination and explicitly finds that on-the-job search is an important driver of wage growth, which is central to labor market frictions and worker mobility. It is also relevant because it uses job-specific human capital and wage offer distributions to understand how workers move across employers, though it does not directly analyze technology diffusion or knowledge spillovers. This paper shows how record-value theory, a branch of statistics that deals with the timing and magnitude of extreme values in sequences of random variables, can be used to nonparametrically identify the offer distribution of wages workers face.Using NLSY wage data, I show that the data supports the hypothesis that the wage offer distribution is Pareto but rejects that it is lognormal.In addition, I show that my approach can be used to construct a bound on the return to job-specific human capital.Using the same NLSY data, I find that job-specific human capital plays only a minor role in the wage growth of the workers in my sample.Instead, wage growth among the young workers in my sample...	Gadi Barlevy
8	2006	The mobility of university inventors in Europe ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies mobility of university inventors and how movement from academia to business helps transfer patent-related, tacit knowledge across organizations. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on skilled worker mobility and knowledge diffusion, though it is more descriptive and focused on academic inventors in Europe than on broader labor market frictions or aggregate productivity effects. This paper analyses university patenting and academic mobility based on information in the PatVal database on European inventors in six European countries. We show that university participation in patenting activity is grossly underestimated when assessed on ownership exclusively: university-owned patents account for only 15% of patents with at least one academic inventor. Academic mobility is unevenly distributed across technologies (most is in biomedics) and across countries (mainly the UK, Germany and the Netherlands). Descriptive evidence highlights the high levels of patenting and mobility of UK academic inventors. We analyse labour mobility from academia to business. Multinomial...	Gustavo Crespi, Aldo Geuna, Lionel Nesta
8	2017	Industrial Development Through Tacit Knowledge Seeding: Evidence from the Bangladesh Garment Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on worker mobility as a channel for transferring tacit industry knowledge from pioneer firms to new entrants. It speaks directly to knowledge diffusion, firm capability building, and industrial development, though it is more about industry formation in a developing-country context than about labor market frictions or policy interventions like non-competes. We explore how the establishment of an industry pioneer through foreign seeding of industry knowledge can subsequently catalyze the growth of a developing country’s industry by involuntarily propagating the knowledge to subsequent entrants. As industry knowledge has tacit elements, we focus on mechanisms that enable experienced workers from the pioneer to seed the knowledge to new entrants. We examine the relationship between entrants’ characteristics and the mechanisms exploited to access the industry knowledge, and the impact of the mechanisms exploited on firm performance. Empirical findings from two historical episodes in the Bangladesh garment industry suggest that industry knowledge...	Romel Mostafa, Steven Klepper
8	2015	Learning by hiring and change to organizational knowledge: Countering obsolescence as organizations age ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies learning by hiring as a mechanism for introducing distant knowledge into firms and changing organizational capabilities, which speaks directly to worker-driven knowledge diffusion. Its focus is on firm-level knowledge renewal and obsolescence rather than labor market frictions or policy restrictions on mobility, so it is highly relevant but not a core paper on non-competes or matching frictions. Research summary: This paper investigates the relationship between hiring and the ability of organizations to evolve their capabilities as they age. While prior research establishes that organizations become rigid to change as they age, it underemphasizes measures that they may take to renew their adaptive potential. I address this gap by investigating whether hiring stimulates change to the knowledge organizations possess. Learning by hiring, I argue, helps organizations to evolve their knowledge as they age by disrupting routine, introducing distant knowledge, and facilitating socialization. I test the effectiveness of these mechanisms using 38 years (1970–2007) of data from the U.S...	Amit Jain
8	2020	Catching up by hiring: The case of Huawei ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a firm catches up technologically by hiring skilled experts from global technology centers, which directly speaks to worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer. It is especially relevant for understanding how hiring, retention of offshore experts, and access to external labor markets affect firm capabilities and the diffusion of innovation across firms and countries. Abstract Hiring experts in centers of state-of-the-art technology is an important way in which a multinational enterprise (MNE) can gain competitive advantage, and yet use of this mechanism remains under-researched. This study uses the case of a Chinese MNE that recently achieved a leading position in the telecommunications market: Huawei Technologies. Taking the perspective of Huawei’s offshore hires, I find that greenfield investments contributed to overcoming liabilities of origin and outsidership in the global telecommunications industry. Nevertheless, even now that Huawei has caught up with industry incumbents, its output capabilities remain dependent on the innovation capabilities of...	Kerstin J. Schaefer
8	2007	The Process of Creative Construction: Knowledge Spillovers, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurial entry, and economic growth as mechanisms of diffusion between incumbents and new firms. While it is more conceptual and less focused on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it speaks directly to the broader process by which knowledge moves across organizations and fuels innovation. Abstract Questioning the underlying assumptions of the process of creative destruction, we conceptualize an alternative process of creative construction that may characterize the dynamics between entrants and incumbents. We discuss the underlying mechanism of knowledge spillover strategic entrepreneurship whereby knowledge investments by existing organizations, when coupled with entrepreneurial action by individuals embedded in their context, results in new venture creation, heterogeneity in performance, and subsequent growth in industries, regions, and economies. The framework has implications for future research in entrepreneurship, strategy, and economic growth. Copyright © 2008...	Rajshree Agarwal, David B. Audretsch, Sarkar Mb
8	1993	R&D spillovers and technology transfer among and within vertical keiretsu groups ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology transfer and R&D spillovers across firms, which are central to understanding how knowledge diffuses in the economy. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its evidence on intra- and inter-group diffusion within keiretsu provides useful context for firm-level mechanisms of knowledge transmission and innovation spillovers. Using a dynamic factor demand model with R&D externalities, we analyze the effects of technological diffusion among and within vertical keiretsu groups in the Japanese electrical machinery industry. We find that technology transfer from a core firm to its subcontracting firms is substantial. We also find positive R&D spillovers, which stem from the R&D activities of other keiretsu groups. Particularly remarkable are the spillovers between core firms of competing keiretsu groups. © 1993.	Kazuyuki Suzuki
8	2014	Recruitment, knowledge integration and modes of innovation ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how employee recruitment from universities and related industries changes firms' knowledge bases and innovation outcomes, which is directly tied to worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. It is especially useful for understanding how the source of movers affects the type and quality of innovation, though it focuses more on recruitment and knowledge integration than on labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. This paper investigates how the strength and intrinsic characteristics of firms' knowledge bases and processing routines have evolved with the past inflow of employees. The empirical analysis is based on linked public register and innovation survey data for Norway. It finds that recruitment from universities, research institutes and higher education institutions has increased the capacity of firms to generate technical inventions. Yet, the organizational knowledge bases and processing routines on which commercial innovation output depends have been strengthened only by the recruitment that has occurred from related industries. Implications for research, management and policy are drawn.	Sverre J. Herstad, Tore Sandven, Bernd Ebersberger
8	2018	Global Collaborative Patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility within firms and how cross-border movement and team composition shape knowledge diffusion and the exploitation of new technology. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on how worker mobility affects the direction and quality of knowledge transfer across firms and countries, though it is more about multinational collaboration than labor-market frictions like non-competes or search costs. We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new foreign region for innovative work, especially in settings where intellectual property protection is weak. We also connect collaborative patents to the ethnic composition of the firm’s U.S. inventors and cross-border mobility of inventors within the firm. The inventor team composition has important consequences for how the new knowledge is exploited within and outside of the firm.	Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr
8	2020	Talent goes to global cities: The world network of scientists’ mobility ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies scientist mobility as a mechanism shaping the geographic diffusion and concentration of knowledge, which is central to understanding how worker movement affects innovation. It also speaks to firm- and city-level retention and attraction of talent, though it focuses more on location advantage and network effects than on labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. Global cities boast higher rates of innovation as measured through patent and scientific production. However, the source of the location advantage of innovation hubs is still debated in the literature, with arguments ranging from localized knowledge spillovers to network effects. Thanks to an extensive data set of individual scientist career paths, we shed new light on the role of scientist location choices in determining the superior innovative performance of global cities. We analyze the career paths of around two million researchers over a decade across more than two thousand cities around the globe. First, we show that scientists active in global cities are more productive in terms of...	Luca Verginer, Massimo Riccaboni
8	2024	Worker Beliefs About Outside Options ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker beliefs about outside options, job search, and wage negotiation, all of which affect labor market mobility and the flow of workers across firms. Its equilibrium model of anchored beliefs generating monopsony power and labor market segmentation is relevant to how labor market frictions can impede knowledge diffusion, even though it does not directly analyze technology transfer or inventor mobility. Abstract Standard labor market models assume that workers hold accurate beliefs about the external wage distribution, and hence their outside options with other employers. We test this assumption by comparing German workers’ beliefs about outside options with objective benchmarks. First, we find that workers wrongly anchor their beliefs about outside options on their current wage: workers that would experience a 10% wage change if switching to their outside option only expect a 1% change. Second, workers in low-paying firms underestimate wages elsewhere. Third, in response to information about the wages of similar workers, respondents correct their beliefs about their outside options and...	Simon Jäger, Christopher Roth, Nina Roussille, et al.
8	2017	Bridging Strategic Human Capital and Employee Entrepreneurship Research: A Labor Market Frictions Approach ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on labor market frictions and employee mobility as mechanisms shaping knowledge transfer, particularly through moves to competitor firms and to entrepreneurship. It is especially useful for understanding how frictions like retention policies or non-compete-like constraints can alter worker movement, though it is more of a conceptual bridge between literatures than a direct study of productivity, innovation, or aggregate diffusion outcomes. Research summary Strategic human capital research sits at the intersection of strategy and employee mobility research. Employee entrepreneurship research sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship and employee mobility research. We demonstrate how a shared focus on labor market frictions connects these two complementary but largely disparate literatures through their mutual emphasis on employee mobility. Our examination of the impact of various labor market frictions on employee mobility to competitor firms and employee transitions to entrepreneurship suggests that the outcomes of some frictions are divergent across the two literatures, the outcomes of some are aligned, and the outcomes...	Benjamin A. Campbell, David Kryscynski, Daniel Olson
8	2004	Knowledge Transfer Through Inheritance: Spin-Out Generation, Development, and Survival ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of knowledge transfer via employee or founder movement into new firms, with “spin-out generation” pointing directly to worker-originated firm creation and diffusion of know-how. The focus on development and survival also fits firm dynamics and the role of inherited knowledge in sustaining innovative enterprises, though it may be more about entrepreneurship than broader labor market frictions. No abstract available.	Rajshree Agarwal, Raj Echambadi, April Franco, et al.
8	2011	Mergers, Spinoffs, and Employee Incentives ↗ This paper is closely related because it examines how firm structure and product-market competition affect employee incentives to innovate, which is directly relevant to how firms retain and motivate skilled workers whose effort generates knowledge creation. It is especially useful for the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion because it highlights the role of competition in the labor market for human capital and how mergers or spinoffs can alter innovation incentives, though it does not directly study worker movement or spillovers across firms. This article studies mergers between competing firms and shows that while such mergers reduce the level of product market competition, they may have an adverse effect on em-ployee incentives to innovate. In industries where value creation depends on innovation and development of new products, mergers are likely to be inefficient even though they increase the market power of the post-merger firm. In such industries, a stand-alone struc-ture where independent firms compete both in the product market and in the market for employee human capital leads to a greater profitability. Furthermore, our analysis shows that multidivisional firms can improve employee incentives and increase firm value by...	Paolo Fulghieri, Merih Sevilir
8	2011	Research Networks and Inventors' Mobility as Drivers of Innovation: Evidence from Europe ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors' mobility as a driver of innovation and explicitly links labor mobility to regional knowledge production. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on how worker movement facilitates technology diffusion, though it emphasizes regional innovation outcomes more than the effects of specific labor market frictions or policy interventions. Miguélez E. and Moreno R. Research networks and inventors' mobility as drivers of innovation: evidence from Europe, Regional Studies. This paper investigates the importance of the labour mobility of inventors, as well as the scale, extent and density of their collaborative research networks, for regional innovation outcomes. To do so, a knowledge production function framework at the regional level is used. The empirical approach presented takes full account of spatial interactions by estimating a spatial lag model, together, where necessary, with a spatial error model. In addition, standard errors are calculated using spatial heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent (SHAC)...	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
8	2011	Employer-to-Employer Flows in the United States: Estimates Using Linked Employer-Employee Data ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies employer-to-employer worker mobility using linked employer-employee data, which is central to understanding how labor movement can transmit knowledge across firms and industries. Although it does not directly estimate technology diffusion, non-competes, or productivity effects, its documented patterns of mobility across workers, jobs, and industries provide important empirical context for models of knowledge spillovers through worker flows. We use administrative data linking workers and firms to study employer-to-employer (E-to-E) flows. After discussing how to identify such flows in quarterly data, we investigate their basic empirical patterns. We find that the pace of E-to-E flows is high, representing approximately 4% of employment and 30% of separations each quarter. The pace of E-to-E flows appears to be highly procyclical and varies systematically across worker, job, and employer characteristics. There are rich patterns in terms of origin and destination of industries. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that more than half of the workers making E-to-E transitions switch even broadly defined industries (i.e., NAICS...	Melissa Bjelland, Bruce Fallick, John Haltiwanger, et al.
8	2016	Employee mobility, spin‐outs, and knowledge spill‐in: How incumbent firms can learn from new ventures ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker/inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion, focusing on how knowledge spills between incumbent firms and new ventures through employee movement. It is especially relevant to the project’s themes of inventor mobility, spin-outs, and firm-level knowledge transfer, though it is more about reverse spill-ins to incumbents than about labor market frictions or aggregate productivity effects. Research summary: We consider conditions in which incumbent firms are particularly poised to benefit from knowledge spilling in from new ventures that employ individuals previously employed by the focal incumbent firm. We distinguish between inventors who leave their incumbent employers to found spin‐outs and those who become non‐founding employees of existing new ventures. Using a sample of new ventures and incumbent firms in the U . S . information technology ( IT ) sector, we find that incumbents are more likely to benefit from patented knowledge that spills in from their spin‐outs than from new ventures that employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective incumbent...	Ji Youn Kim, H. Kevin Steensma
8	2018	Does Knowledge Protection Benefit Shareholders? Evidence from Stock Market Reaction and Firm Investment in Knowledge Assets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a labor-market institution that restricts worker mobility through the inevitable disclosure doctrine, a mechanism directly relevant to knowledge diffusion and spillovers. It also examines how stronger knowledge protection affects investment in knowledge assets and entrepreneurial activity, which speaks to the project’s questions about firm incentives, innovation, and the aggregate consequences of mobility frictions. This article studies whether knowledge protection affects shareholder value and firms’ investment in knowledge assets using the staggered adoptions and rejections of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) by U.S. state courts as exogenous changes in the level of knowledge protection. We find positive (negative) abnormal stock returns around the IDD adoption (rejection) day for firms headquartered in the state, and we uncover a positive IDD treatment effect on firms’ investment in knowledge assets. Moreover, the effects on stock returns and knowledge assets investment are stronger in more knowledge-oriented industries and firms. Finally, enhancing knowledge protection does not discourage...	Buhui Qiu, Teng Wang
8	2004	How Special is the Special Relationship? Using the Impact of US R&D Spillovers on UK Firms as a Test of Technology Sourcing This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility and the geographic location of R&D labs mediate international knowledge spillovers, which is central to understanding technology diffusion through workers. It also speaks to the direction and magnitude of spillovers across firms and countries, although it is more about cross-country R&D sourcing than labor market frictions like non-competes or within-country worker mobility. How much does US-based R&D benefit other countries and through what mechanisms? We test the "technologysourcing" hypothesis that foreign research labs located on US soil tap into US R&D spillovers and improvehome country productivity. Using panels of UK and US firms matched to patent data we show that UK firmswho had established a high proportion of US-based inventors by 1990 benefited disproportionately from thegrowth of the US R&D stock over the next 10 years. We estimate that UK firms' Total Factor Productivitywould have been at least 5% lower in 2000 (about $14bn) in the absence of the US R&D growth in the 1990s.We also find that technology sourcing is more important for countries and...	Rachel Griffith, Rupert Harrison, John Van Reenen
8	2013	Buy, Keep or Sell: Economic Growth and the Market for Ideas ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a paper about the market for ideas and how knowledge is traded, retained, or transferred, which is closely related to technology diffusion and spillovers. It may not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market frictions, but the link to economic growth and ideas makes it highly relevant to the project. No abstract available.	Ufuk Akcigit, Murat Alp Celik, Jeremy Greenwood
8	2015	Non-tenured post-doctoral researchers’ job mobility and research output: An analysis of the role of research discipline, department size, and coauthors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility among researchers affects knowledge transfer and research productivity, which is central to understanding human capital spillovers and diffusion through labor movement. It also highlights the role of social capital and institutional ties in shaping the costs and benefits of mobility, relevant to how frictions can alter the direction and quality of knowledge diffusion. To succeed in academia, non-tenured researchers aim to maximize their quality-adjusted research output. This paper analyzes if and how changing institutional affiliations as a non-tenured post-doctoral researcher influences publications, and how potential effects depend on the context of the researcher. Theoretically, moving to another university at another place can have positive and negative effects on career success. On the one hand when moving to another institution one stands to gain knowledge (human capital), colleagues and coauthors (social capital). On the other hand part of one's knowledge might no longer be relevant and contacts to colleagues and even coauthors might be lost. In...	Agnes Bäker
8	2008	Do Local Knowledge Spillovers Matter for Development? An Empirical Study of Uruguay’s Software Cluster ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion through labor mobility, spin-offs, and informal interactions within a regional cluster, which are central mechanisms in the project. Its focus on how local spillovers affect firm innovation in a developing-country software cluster provides useful evidence on the role of worker movement in transmitting knowledge, though it is more about regional development than labor-market frictions or policy restrictions on mobility. In economically advanced countries, local knowledge spillovers (LKS) between agglomerated firms are seen as major drivers of regional innovation and growth. In contrast, innovation research focusing on developing countries has emphasized international linkages, and has largely neglected LKS. This paper assesses the importance of LKS for innovation of clustered firms in a developing-country setting. An econometric analysis with new survey data from software firms in Montevideo, Uruguay, shows that LKS have a significantly positive impact on firms' innovation performance through labor mobility, company spin-offs, and informal interactions among actors. LKS are also shown to be highly...	Effie Kesidou, Henny Romijn
8	2019	Revisiting the Portability of Performance Paradox: Employee Mobility and the Utilization of Human and Social Capital Resources ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility affects the transfer and utilization of human and social capital across firms, which is central to knowledge diffusion through labor markets. Its evidence on how external hires perform better when their embedded knowledge and relationships are portable speaks directly to how hiring, retention, and worker movement shape firm performance and the quality of spillovers. This study revisits the portability of performance paradox—the common finding that external hires fail to replicate prior performance after switching firms—by examining how the nature of an employee’s human capital and social capital resources relate to the ease with which external hires can be utilized in an organization’s value creating activities. Drawing theoretically from the person–organization fit and social capital literatures, we theorize that the integration and utilization of external hires will correlate with two types of human capital resource fit: similarity and complementarity, and two dimensions of retained social capital resources: internal and external. Using data from the...	Joseph Raffiee, Heejung Byun
8	2007	What is global and what is local in knowledge-generating interaction? The case of the biotech cluster in Uppsala, Sweden ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor mobility within a biotech cluster as a channel for knowledge dynamics, directly touching on how worker movement contributes to diffusion across firms. It is especially relevant for understanding the spatial scope of knowledge spillovers and how localized labor markets shape the transfer of expertise, though it is more descriptive of cluster interactions than focused on policy frictions like non-competes. The aim of this paper is to describe the structure of the biotech cluster in Uppsala, Sweden, and to analyse how cluster knowledge dynamics result from processes and interactions unfolding at different spatial scales. The empirical basis for the analyses are derived from various sources: business registers, an internet-based survey of 106 firms, 23 in-depth interviews with key individuals, and a longitudinal database give data on the degree to which collaborations, rivalry, business transactions, capital sourcing and labour mobility take place in the local cluster. In addition to asking questions about which interactions are most localized and globalized, respectively, the paper also sets...	Anders Waxell, Anders Malmberg
8	2019	What Happened to U.S. Business Dynamism? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies declining knowledge diffusion from frontier firms to laggards as a key driver of rising concentration and slower business dynamism. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its emphasis on patenting, innovation, and diffusion mechanisms is highly relevant to understanding aggregate productivity and technology spread. In the past several decades, the U.S. economy has witnessed a number of striking trends that indicate a rising market concentration and a slowdown in business dynamism. In this paper, we make an attempt to understand potential common forces behind these empirical regularities through the lens of a micro-founded general equilibrium model of endogenous firm dynamics. Importantly, the theoretical model captures the strategic behavior between competing firms, its effect on their innovation decisions, and the resulting "best versus the rest" dynamics. We focus on multiple potential mechanisms that can potentially drive the observed changes and use the calibrated model to assess the relative...	Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates
8	2015	Experiential and Social Learning in Firms: The Case of Hydraulic Fracturing in the Bakken Shale ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of how knowledge is transferred within and across firms through workers’ experience and social interactions, which fits directly with diffusion of know-how and human-capital spillovers. The hydraulic fracturing setting is likely to feature tacit technical knowledge, learning-by-doing, and possibly worker or engineer mobility as channels of technology diffusion, though the title does not explicitly mention labor market frictions or policy. No abstract available.	Thomas Covert
8	2012	Earnings Effects of Entrepreneurial Experience: Evidence from the Semiconductor Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how experience in start-ups within the semiconductor industry generates transferable human capital and persistent earnings gains, which is consistent with the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for knowledge diffusion. While it does not directly analyze non-competes, mobility frictions, or aggregate productivity effects, it provides useful evidence that entrepreneurial experience can create portable skills that matter outside the original firm. Although previous studies have examined the rewards available to individuals inside entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial experience may provide rewards that are independent of the entrepreneurial context. Building on human capital theory, this study provides theoretical explanations for the effects of experience at a start-up on earnings across an individual's career and then examines these implications in the context of California's semiconductor industry. Comparing the career trajectories of employees who join start-ups with a matched control group of comparable workers without start-up experience, I perform a counterfactual analysis and find that start-up experience in this context has...	Benjamin A. Campbell
8	2008	Knowledge flows through social networks in a cluster: Comparing university and industry links ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge diffuses through worker-to-worker and university-industry social networks within a technology cluster, directly touching on spillovers and informal channels of technology transfer. It is especially relevant for understanding the micro-foundations of knowledge diffusion among engineers, though it focuses more on contacts than on mobility frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes. Knowledge spillovers from a university to the local industry play an important role in high-technology clusters, but we know little about these spillovers. This paper examines empirically the extent of informal contacts between employees in firms and local university researchers in a wireless communications cluster. Furthermore, it analyses the features of an engineer who acquires knowledge from these informal contacts. The university-industry contacts are compared to results for informal contacts between employees in firms. The research shows that the interfirm informal contacts are more numerous than university informal contacts. Likewise, knowledge is more frequently acquired from...	Christian Richter Østergaard
8	2007	What is global and what is local in knowledge-generating interaction? The case of the biotech cluster in Uppsala, Sweden ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor mobility within a biotech cluster as a channel for knowledge dynamics, directly aligning with the project’s interest in how worker movement diffuses technology and know-how. It also distinguishes local versus global interactions and shows that labor market dynamics are localized, which is useful for understanding spatial frictions and their effects on knowledge spillovers and innovation. The aim of this paper is to describe the structure of the biotech cluster in Uppsala, Sweden, and to analyse how cluster knowledge dynamics result from processes and interactions unfolding at different spatial scales. The empirical basis for the analyses are derived from various sources: business registers, an internet-based survey of 106 firms, 23 in-depth interviews with key individuals, and a longitudinal database give data on the degree to which collaborations, rivalry, business transactions, capital sourcing and labour mobility take place in the local cluster. In addition to asking questions about which interactions are most localized and globalized, respectively, the paper also sets...	Anders Waxell, Anders Malmberg
8	2001	Knowledge Spillovers at the World's Technology Frontier This paper is closely related because it studies how technological knowledge spills over across locations and how frictions in diffusion shape productivity effects, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion. While it focuses on geography, trade, FDI, and communication channels rather than worker mobility specifically, its findings on the scope and globalization of spillovers are highly relevant background for the project. Convergence in per capita income turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local. Global spillovers favor convergence, while a geographically limited scope of knowledge di#usion can lead to regional clusters of countries where di#erences in income per capita levels persist. This paper estimates the importance of geographic distance for knowledge spillovers, how this changed over time, and whether international trade, foreign direct investment, and communication ows serve as important channels for spillovers. The analysis examines the productivity e#ects of research and development expenditures in the worlds seven major industrialized countries between 1970 and 1995...	Wolfgang Keller
8	2023	How Do Institutions of Higher Education Affect Local Invention? Evidence from the Establishment of US Colleges ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how an educational institution affects local invention and patenting, which speaks directly to technology diffusion and innovation outcomes. The finding that most patents are generated by non-alumni/non-faculty suggests broader local spillovers and knowledge exchange, though it is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions than the project’s core focus. I use narrative historical data on site selection decisions for a subset of US colleges to identify runner-up locations that were strongly considered to become the sites of new colleges. Using runner-up counties as counterfactuals in a difference-in-difference model, I find that establishing a college causes 62 percent more patents per year. Linking patents to novel college yearbook data reveals that only 12 percent of patents in a college’s county came from that college’s alumni or faculty. I find only small differences in patenting between establishing colleges and establishing other institutions as well as between colleges with different focuses on technical fields. (JEL I23, N31, N32...	Michael Andrews
8	2014	Which Peers Matter? The Relative Impacts of Collaborators, Colleagues, and Competitors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the movement of skilled knowledge workers affects the productivity of others and distinguishes competitive from spillover effects of mobility. Its focus on emigrating Soviet mathematicians and collaboration-based knowledge transmission speaks directly to worker mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion, though it is more about academic collaboration than firm-level labor frictions or policy. Many economists believe knowledge production generates positive spillovers among knowledge producers. The available evidence, however, is mixed. We argue that spillovers can exist along three dimensions: idea, geographic, and collaboration space. To isolate the key channel through which knowledge spills over, we use a unique data set to examine the impact of a large post-1992 exodus of Soviet mathematicians on the output of the nonémigrés. Although the data reveal strong competitive effects in idea space, there is evidence of knowledge spillovers in collaboration space, when high-quality researchers directly engage with other researchers in the joint production of new knowledge.	George J. Borjas, Kirk Doran
8	2019	Temporary colocation and collaborative discovery: Who confers at conferences ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how temporary worker colocation at conferences facilitates subsequent collaboration and knowledge spillovers across organizations, which is a direct mechanism of technology diffusion. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on mobility and matching frictions, though it emphasizes short-term proximity and collaboration formation rather than labor market institutions like non-competes or inventor turnover. Abstract Research Summary The flow of knowledge is closely linked to proximity. While extensive works show that long‐term geographic proximity affects work behavior, little is known about the effect of short‐term colocation, such as conferences. Using participant data at Gordon Research Conferences, we estimate difference‐in‐differences and instrumental variable models, which show that attendees who have no prior within‐conference collaborations are more likely to collaborate with other attendees, and that the researchers who have worked previously with other attendees are more likely to continue their collaborations. We also find that researchers who are junior, are located closer to the...	Sen Chai, Richard B. Freeman
8	2005	On the road again: Researcher mobility inside the R&D network ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies researcher mobility as a mechanism for transferring knowledge within R&D networks, directly matching the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses technology and know-how. It is especially relevant for understanding the types of knowledge transferred through different mobility forms and how mobility patterns shape cross-unit synergies, though it is more focused on firm-internal R&D organization than on labor market frictions or economy-wide policy. This paper examines the roles of international assignments and other forms of researcher mobility inside the integrated R&D networks of six of the largest European pharmaceutical companies. From in-depth interviews with R&D managers and scientists it is found that, while the use of international assignments is both limited and often not aimed specifically at the transfer of knowledge, other forms of short-term mobility are widely employed. But what is transferred through such short-term visits is narrow in focus and often related to specific projects whereas international assignments enable the transfer of broader and more complex knowledge. The potential impact of these changes in the...	Paola Criscuolo
8	2015	Did the Job Ladder Fail after the Great Recession? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility, on-the-job search, and employment reallocation across firms using a dynamic job ladder model, all of which are central to understanding how knowledge and workers move across employers. While it does not directly analyze technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its evidence on frictions in worker movement and firm-to-firm transitions is highly relevant to the project’s broader labor-market mechanism. We study employment reallocation across employers through the lens ofa dynamic job ladder model. Workers always agree on a ranking ofemployers at all points in time and search for better jobs both offand on the job. A parsimonious version of the model fits well the timeseries of gross worker flows by employer size from newly available USdata from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Focusing on the US experience in and around the Great Recession, our evidence indicates that the job ladder stopped working then and has not fully resumed yet.	Giuseppe Moscarini, Fabien Postel‐Vinay
8	2021	Monopsony in Movers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies firm wage policies, separations, and monopsony power in labor markets, which are central to understanding worker mobility frictions that can shape knowledge diffusion. While it does not directly analyze inventor movement or technology spillovers, its evidence on labor supply elasticities and mobility responses is highly relevant for how firms retain workers and how frictions affect worker flows. We estimate the impact of the firm component of hourly wage variation on separations from matched Oregon employer-employee data. We use both firm fixed effects estimated from a wage equation as well as a matched IV event study around employment transitions between firms. Separations decline with firm wage policies: the implied firm-level labor supply elasticities are around 4, consistent with recent quasiexperimental evidence, but 3 to 4 times larger than existing estimates using individual wages. We find that monopsonistic competition is pervasive, even in low-wage, high turnover sectors, but with little heterogeneity by labor market concentration.	Ihsaan Bassier, Arindrajit Dubé, Suresh Naidu
8	2021	Geographic Mobility, Immobility, and Geographic Flexibility: A Review and Agenda for Research on the Changing Geography of Work ↗ This review is closely related because it focuses on high-skilled worker geographic mobility as a mechanism for transferring and recombining knowledge across organizations, which is central to technology diffusion and spillovers. It also examines mobility frictions and policy responses such as regulatory constraints and work-from-anywhere flexibility, offering useful context for studying how labor market frictions shape the direction and impact of knowledge movement. In this review, I integrate a wide range of literature that has examined how the “geographic mobility” of high-skilled workers creates value for organizations and indi-viduals. Drawing on this interdisciplinary literature, I document that it creates value by facilitating the transfer and recombination of knowledge, transfer of social capital, organizational norms, and financial capital, as well as by creating opportunities for individuals to develop skills, seek resources, and experience wage increases. I also review the literature around “geographic immobility” and synthesize this body of research under a framework of “geographic mobility frictions” that constrain and add costs to...	Prithwiraj Choudhury
8	2015	Is Co-Invention Expediting Technological Catch Up? A Study of Collaboration between Emerging Country Firms and EU Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how collaboration and inventor co-invention across borders facilitate access to frontier knowledge and technological catch-up, which is central to knowledge diffusion through worker and inventor mobility. While it focuses more on international collaboration than labor-market frictions like non-competes or search costs, it is still highly relevant to understanding how human capital transfer and inventor movement shape innovation and diffusion. Firms from emerging countries are going global, and Europe is attracting around one-third of their direct outward investments. Growing internationalization constitutes an opportunity for technological catch up. In this paper we analyze Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese cross-border inventions with European Union (EU-27) inventors, during the period 1990-2012. Our results suggest that these inventions represent an opportunity for emerging country firms to accumulate technological capabilities, access frontier knowledge, and appropriate the property rights of co-inventions. This paper contributes to understanding catching up by emerging country firms.	Elisa Giuliani, Arianna Martinelli, Roberta Rabellotti
8	2007	University patenting and the pace of industrial innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how an intellectual property regime at universities affects the diffusion and exploitation of knowledge by industrial innovators, which is central to the project’s focus on knowledge transfer and innovation spillovers. It is especially relevant in showing that stronger patenting can slow downstream innovation in science-based sectors, though it does not directly analyze worker mobility or labor market frictions. Universities, traditionally sources of basic science and research knowledge for industrial researchers, have responded to recent public policy changes by increasingly patenting research results produced by academic researchers. While proponents of strong intellectual property protection argue the benefits of strong rights to promote innovation and facilitate markets for knowledge exchange, critics express concerns over restrictions on diffusion and use of upstream knowledge. Results of an analysis of industrial innovation suggest that increasing university patenting is associated with a slowing pace of knowledge exploitation, especially in technology areas that rely more heavily on science...	K. R. Fabrizio
8	2010	Job Search, Bargaining, and Wage Dynamics ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, outside options, and between-firm competition for workers, which are central mechanisms through which labor mobility affects firm behavior and wage dynamics. While it does not directly focus on technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its model of worker movement and retention is highly relevant for understanding labor market frictions that shape knowledge transfer across firms. This article constructs and estimates a model of wage bargaining with on‐the‐job search to explore three different components of wages: general human capital, match‐specific capital, and outside options. As the workers find better job opportunities, the current employer has to compete with outside firms to retain them. This between‐firm competition results in wage growth even when productivity remains the same. The model is estimated by a simulated minimum distance estimator and data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The results indicate that the improved value of the outside option raises wages by 14%–16% in the first 5 years.	Shintaro Yamaguchi
8	2001	The Geographic Reach of Market and Non-Market Channels of Technology Transfer: Comparing Citations and Licenses of University Patents This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge transfers across firms and regions through both market and non-market channels, which is central to understanding technology diffusion. Its focus on licensing, patent citations, and the role of inventor know-how also connects to labor-market frictions and worker mobility as mechanisms for transmitting tacit knowledge, though it is not primarily about mobility or non-compete policy. The growth of high-technology clusters in the United States suggests the presence of strong regional agglomeration effects that reflect proximity to universities or other research institutions. Using data on licensed patents from the University of California, Stanford University, and Columbia University, this paper compares the geographic 'reach' of knowledge flows from university inventions through two important channels: non-market 'spillovers' exemplified by patent citations and market contracts (licenses). We find that knowledge flows through market transactions to be more geographically localized than those operating through non-market 'spillovers.' Moreover, the differential effects...	David C. Mowery, Arvids A. Ziedonis
8	2008	Have university knowledge flows narrowed? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge flows from universities to firms, which is a key channel of technology diffusion relevant to worker and inventor mobility. Although it does not focus on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility costs, it provides evidence on changes in the direction and concentration of knowledge spillovers across organizations. The rate of university patenting increased dramatically during the 1980s. Did the manner in which knowledge embedded in university patents was managed change during this period of rapid patenting growth? Using a Herfindahl-type measure of knowledge flow concentration and employing a difference-in-differences estimation to compare university-to-firm patent citations across two time periods, we find that the university diffusion premium (the degree to which university knowledge outflows are more widely distributed than those of firms) declined by more than half during the 1980s. In addition, we find that the university diversity premium (the degree to which knowledge inflows used by...	Carlos Rosell, Ajay Agrawal
8	2009	On-the-Job Search, Mismatch and Efficiency* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, worker mobility, and how labor market frictions shape firm behavior and equilibrium efficiency. Its focus on business-stealing externalities, wage-setting, and counteroffers connects directly to how mobility costs and firm policies affect hiring, retention, and the allocation of talent, though it does not specifically center on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility. This paper characterizes the equilibrium for a large class of search models with two-sided heterogeneity and on-the-job search. Besides the well-known congestion externalities, we show that on-the-job search in combination with monopsonistic wage setting <it>without</it> commitment creates a “business-stealing” externality. In the absence of congestion effects, this leads to excessive vacancy creation. Under wage setting <it>with</it> commitment this externality is absent because when posting a wage, firms take into account the expected productivity of future workers in their current jobs. If firms are able to make and respond to counteroffers, then they will not have to pay no-quit premia...	Pieter A. Gautier, Coen N. Teulings, Aico van Vuuren
8	1997	Waves of Creative Destruction: Firm-Specific Learning-by-Doing and the Dynamics of Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers, innovation dynamics, and how firm-specific learning affects the pace and pattern of technological diffusion across firms. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its analysis of endogenous innovation waves and barriers to entry speaks to how frictions can shape aggregate productivity and innovation outcomes. This paper develops a model of repeated innovation with knowledge spillovers. The model's novel feature is that firms compete on two dimensions: (1) product quality, where one firm's innovation ultimately spills over to other firms; and (2) distribution costs, where there are no spillovers across firms and where learning-by-doing on the part of incumbent firms gives them a competitive advantage over would-be entrants. Such firm-specific learning-by-doing has two important consequences: (1) it can in some circumstances dramatically reduce the long-run average level of innovation; (2) it leads to endogeneous bunching, or waves, in innovative activity.	Jeremy C. Stein
8	2017	Employee mobility, noncompete agreements, product-market competition, and company disclosure ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how noncompete enforcement shapes employee mobility and information leakage across firms, which are central mechanisms in knowledge diffusion. Although its outcome is corporate disclosure rather than productivity or innovation, the paper provides direct evidence that mobility frictions alter spillovers and competitive information flows across firms. This study explores the impact on companies’ disclosures of U.S. states’ different propensities to enforce noncompete agreements. I find a negative association between a state’s enforcement of noncompete agreements and disclosure activities of firms headquartered in that state. Companies that face local rivals drive some results. Analyses that focus on several state-level changes in enforcement level of noncompete agreements confirm this association. Overall, the findings are consistent with a higher enforcement of noncompete agreements increasing proprietary costs of disclosure, because companies in high-enforcement settings are less informed about each other due to reduced information...	Daniel Aobdia
8	2014	Spinoffs and the Mobility of U.S. Merchant Semiconductor Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility in a high-tech industry and shows how spinoff formation shapes knowledge movement across firms. It is especially relevant to your project’s themes of worker mobility, firm entry, and the role of noncompete-like frictions and clustering in facilitating technology diffusion. Data on inventors and assignees of patents are used to analyze the mobility of semiconductor inventors. Exploiting data on the origins of semiconductor producers with larger sales, we argue that the higher mobility of semiconductor inventors in Silicon Valley is in great part due to the entry of spinoffs there. Our empirical evidence suggests that spinoff entry promoted mobility in Silicon Valley even before the industry was clustered there. Agglomeration economies and the ban on noncompete covenants may influence spinoff entry, but spinoffs promote mobility even in the absence of those conditions. Because most of the greater inventor mobility in Silicon Valley corresponds to inventors...	Cristobal Cheyre, Steven Klepper, Francisco Veloso
8	2021	Low-Wage Workers and the Enforceability of Noncompete Agreements ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies noncompete enforceability as a labor market friction that affects worker mobility, wages, and occupational outcomes, which are central to understanding knowledge diffusion through labor movement. Although it focuses on low-wage workers rather than inventors or engineers, its evidence on mobility, spillovers, and the effects of restricting worker movement is directly informative for the project’s policy and mechanism questions. We exploit the 2008 Oregon ban on noncompete agreements (NCAs) for hourly-paid workers to provide the first evidence on the impact of NCAs on low-wage workers. We find that banning NCAs for hourly workers increased hourly wages by 2%–3% on average. Since only a subset of workers sign NCAs, scaling this estimate by the prevalence of NCA use in the hourly-paid population suggests that the effect on employees actually bound by NCAs may be as great as 14%–21%, though the true effect is likely lower due to labor market spillovers onto those not bound by NCAs. Whereas the positive wage effects are found across the age, education, and wage distributions, they are stronger for female workers and in...	Michael Lipsitz, Evan Starr
8	2015	Learning by Hiring: The Effects of Scientists’ Inbound Mobility on Research Performance in Academia ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inbound mobility as a mechanism for localized learning and performance spillovers, which maps directly onto the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for knowledge diffusion. Although the setting is academia rather than firms and it does not address labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility policy, it provides useful evidence on how hiring mobile scientists affects incumbent productivity and knowledge transfer. This study investigates the effects of scientists’ inbound mobility on the research performance of incumbent scientists in an academic setting. The theoretical framework integrates insights from learning theory and social comparison theory to suggest two main mechanisms behind these effects: localized learning and social comparison. The authors propose several hypotheses about the conditions that might intensify or weaken such effects. Specifically, the arrival of new scientific personnel is likely to exert stronger positive effects on the performance of incumbent scientists with shorter (cf. longer) organizational tenure; in addition, academic departments with less diversified expertise...	Kremena Slavova, Andréa Fosfuri, Julio O. De Castro
8	2017	Knowledge Worker Mobility in Context: Pushing the Boundaries of Theory and Methods ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on knowledge worker mobility as a mechanism for transferring employees, knowledge, and entrepreneurial activity across organizations and settings. It is especially useful as a framing and synthesis piece for the contextual frictions and conditions that shape mobility, though it appears more conceptual than directly focused on non-competes, productivity, or innovation outcomes. Abstract Scholars are paying more attention to knowledge workers (KW) as they gain importance in the knowledge‐based economy. Knowledge worker mobility (KWM) can involve various forms of employee and entrepreneurial movements: the transfer of employees from one organization to another either through locational movement or through a change in ownership, the transfer of employees within the same organization but in different units and/or geographies, and the spinning off by employees into new ventures. KWM spans a variety of different contexts which have rarely been explored in prior research. We focus on advancing our understanding of KWM in context, pushing the boundaries of theory and...	Mike Wright, Valentina Tartari, Kenneth Guang-Lih Huang, et al.
8	2020	Intrapreneurship and absorptive capacities: The dynamic effect of labor mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it examines how labor mobility affects firms’ absorptive capacity, a key channel through which knowledge is understood, assimilated, and used for innovation. Its emphasis on interactions between firm and regional labor stock/mobility and on labor market fluidity makes it directly relevant to questions about worker movement, matching frictions, and knowledge diffusion. While the importance of absorptive capacities for the engagement in innovative activities has been addressed in numerous studies, the drivers remain an open question. As absorptive capacities are indispensably linked to an individual's human capital, the management of these capacities needs to consider the mobility of individuals. We focus on absorptive capacities as an operationalization and essential part of firms' intrapreneurial capabilities that enable firms to both understand and exploit existing internal and external knowledge and generate and implement new ideas to enhance competitiveness. Considering both the labor stock and mobility on a regional and firm level, our results...	David B. Audretsch, Erik E. Lehmann, Matthias Menter, et al.
8	2020	How Much Should we Trust Estimates of Firm Effects and Worker Sorting? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility across firms and how limited mobility biases estimates of firm effects and worker sorting, which are central to understanding labor market frictions in knowledge diffusion. Although it does not directly analyze technology transfer, non-competes, or innovation outcomes, its findings on sorting and mobility constraints are highly relevant for how workers move and potentially carry knowledge between firms. Many studies use matched employer-employee data to estimate a statistical model of earnings determination where log-earnings are expressed as the sum of worker effects, firm effects, covariates, and idiosyncratic error terms. Estimates based on this model have produced two influential yet controversial conclusions. First, firm effects typically explain around 20% of the variance of log-earnings, pointing to the importance of firm-specific wage-setting for earnings inequality. Second, the correlation between firm and worker effects is often small and sometimes negative, indicating little if any sorting of high-wage workers to high-paying firms. The objective of this paper is to assess the...	Stéphane Bonhomme, Kerstin Holzheu, Thibaut Lamadon, et al.
8	2013	The Rejuvenation of Inventors Through Corporate Spinouts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility via corporate spinouts as a mechanism that changes how knowledge is recombined and transferred across firms. It directly speaks to the project’s themes of inventor movement, knowledge diffusion, and how firm boundaries shape exploratory versus exploitative innovation, though it is narrower than the broader labor-market frictions and aggregate productivity questions. This article focuses on corporate spinouts as a strategy that can rejuvenate the inventive efforts of inventors with a long tenure in the same company. We rely on an unbalanced panel of 5,604 inventor-year observations to study a matched sample of 431 inventors employed by the Xerox Corporation and find evidence in support of three predictions. First, inventors who join a spinout increase the extent of exploration in their inventive activities. Second, they decrease the extent to which they rely on the parent organization’s knowledge. Third, because long-tenured employees, through socialization, tend to progressively adopt more exploitative behavior than short-tenured members, they benefit...	Bruno Cirillo, Stefano Brusoni, Giovanni Valentini
8	2021	The Selection of Talent: Experimental and Structural Evidence from Ethiopia ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies search frictions in labor markets and how they shape firms’ ability to recruit talented workers, which is central to understanding labor mobility and matching. Although it does not directly analyze knowledge diffusion, non-competes, or inventor mobility, it provides useful evidence and a structural framework for how frictions affect the sorting of skilled workers into firms. We study how search frictions in the labor market affect firms’ ability to recruit talented workers. In a field experiment in Ethiopia, we show that an employer can attract more talented applicants by offering a small monetary incentive for making a job application. Estimates from a structural model suggest that the intervention is effective because the cost of making a job application is large, and positively correlated with jobseeker ability. We provide evidence that this positive correlation is driven by dynamic selection. In a second experiment, we show that local recruiters underestimate the positive impacts of application incentives. (JEL J23, J24, J31, J64, O15)	Girum Abebe, Stefano Caria, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina
8	2010	Job mobility restriction mechanisms and appropriability in organizations: The mediating role of secrecy and lead time ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies job mobility restrictions and how they affect the appropriability of R&D investments, which is central to understanding how labor market frictions shape knowledge diffusion. Its focus on secrecy, lead time, and biotechnology firms is relevant to firm-level strategies for retaining knowledge and limiting spillovers, though it is less directly about economy-wide productivity or inventor mobility dynamics. This paper addresses the following question: does mobility restriction enhance the appropriability of R&D investments? And if so, how does this occur? We propose that mobility restriction mechanisms affect appropriability through their impact on secrecy and lead time. We test mediation hypotheses in a sample of biotechnology firms and discuss the implications for intellectual property protection strategies and human resource management. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.	Hélène Delerue, Albert Lejeune
8	2016	Is high-quality knowledge always beneficial? Knowledge overlap and innovation performance in technological mergers and acquisitions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge moves across firms through technological mergers and acquisitions and how that transfer affects subsequent innovation performance. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its emphasis on knowledge overlap, acquisition of high-quality knowledge, and firm-level diffusion of technology makes it highly relevant to the project’s broader theme of knowledge transfer and innovation. Abstract This research analyses the effects of the knowledge overlap between acquirer and target firms on the performance of technological mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Extending previous research that has focused on the quantitative characteristics of knowledge, this research introduces a framework capturing the effects of both the quantity and quality of knowledge in overlapped and nonoverlapped parts of the knowledge base on subsequent innovation performance. Analyzing a data set of 192 technological M&As of 162 high-technology firms from 2001 to 2009, the results show that a high quality of overlapped knowledge has a positive effect on subsequent innovation performance, while the...	John Han, Gil S. Jo, Jina Kang
8	2015	Equilibrium Technology Diffusion, Trade, and Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion as an equilibrium process and shows how market conditions affect firms’ incentives to adopt existing technologies, which is central to understanding knowledge transmission and growth. It does not focus on worker mobility, labor-market frictions, or inventor movement, but it provides useful theory on diffusion incentives, firm heterogeneity, and the aggregate productivity consequences of improved adoption. We study how opening to trade affects economic growth in a model where heterogeneous firms can adopt new technologies already in use by other firms in their home country. We characterize the growth rate using a summary statistic of the profit distribution-the mean-min ratio. Opening to trade increases the profit spread through increased export opportunities and foreign competition, induces more rapid technology adoption, and generates faster growth. Quantitatively, these forces produce large welfare gains from trade by increasing an inefficiently low rate of technology adoption and economic growth.	Jesse Perla, Christopher Tonetti, Michael Waugh
8	2021	Learning From Coworkers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion within firms through coworker learning, using matched employer-employee data to estimate how workers absorb skills from more knowledgeable peers. While it does not focus on mobility frictions, non-competes, or inventor movement, it directly informs the microfoundations of knowledge transfer, firm-level learning, and the role of labor-market competition in pricing and transmitting human capital. We investigate learning at the workplace. To do so, we use German administrative data that contain information on the entire workforce of a sample of establishments. We document that having more‐highly‐paid coworkers is strongly associated with future wage growth, particularly if those workers earn more. Motivated by this fact, we propose a dynamic theory of a competitive labor market where firms produce using teams of heterogeneous workers that learn from each other. We develop a methodology to structurally estimate knowledge flows using the full‐richness of the German employer‐employee matched data. The methodology builds on the observation that a competitive labor market prices coworker...	Gregor Jarosch, Ezra Oberfield, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg
8	2022	The impact of geographical distance on learning through collaboration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how geographic distance shapes knowledge spillovers through collaboration, which is central to understanding the diffusion of technology and ideas across workers and firms. While it focuses on scholarly collaboration rather than labor mobility, it provides strong evidence on spatial frictions in knowledge transfer and their implications for innovation and knowledge-intensive activity. There is little question that new communication and transportation technologies have effectively “shrunk the world” for a great many activities. At the same time, the “death of distance” has been greatly exaggerated, especially in fields such as academic scholarship and knowledge development where the positive benefits of knowledge spillovers remain highly distance dependent. We analyze 17.6 million publications authored by 1.7 million scholars to examine how knowledge spillovers between scholars collaborating at different geographical distances impacts their future knowledge portfolios. Our results show that in 1975, scholars collaborating locally were 57 % more likely to learn from...	Frank van der Wouden, Hyejin Youn
8	2013	Do General Managerial Skills Spur Innovation? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market frictions, specifically non-compete enforceability, shape executive mobility and thereby affect firm innovation outcomes. It is especially relevant for understanding how transferable managerial skills and an efficient labor market can facilitate innovation through better matching and greater willingness to undertake risky projects. We show that firms with chief executive officers (CEOs) who gain general managerial skills over their lifetime work experience produce more patents. We address the potential endogenous CEO-firm matching bias using firm-CEO fixed-effects and variation in the enforceability of non-compete agreements across states and over time during the CEO’s career. Our findings suggest that generalist CEOs spur innovation because they have skills that can be applied elsewhere should innovation projects fail. We conclude that an efficient labor market for executives can promote corporate innovation by providing a mechanism of tolerance for failure.	Cláudia Custódio, Miguel A. Ferreira, Pedro Matos
8	2020	Are Inventors or Firms the Engines of Innovation? ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventors as the key unit of innovation and quantifies the relative importance of inventor human capital versus firm capabilities in explaining inventive output. Its evidence on matching between inventors and firms is especially relevant for understanding how labor mobility, hiring, and firm composition shape knowledge diffusion and innovation dynamics, even though it does not focus explicitly on mobility frictions or policy restrictions. In this study, we empirically assess the contributions of inventors and firms for innovation using a 37-year panel of U.S. patenting activity. We estimate that inventors’ human capital is 5–10 times more important than firm capabilities for explaining the variance in inventor output. We then examine matching between inventors and firms and find highly talented inventors are attracted to firms that (i) have weak firm-specific invention capabilities and (ii) employ other talented inventors. A theoretical model that incorporates worker preferences for inventive output rationalizes our empirical findings of negative assortative matching between inventors and firms and positive assortative...	Ajay Bhaskarabhatla, Luı́s Cabral, Deepak Hegde, et al.
8	2022	Knowledge worker mobility and knowledge management in MNEs: A bibliometric analysis and research agenda ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on knowledge worker mobility as a mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge within multinational enterprises and explicitly discusses knowledge spillovers and mobility barriers. However, it is primarily a bibliometric literature review and research agenda rather than an analysis of labor market frictions, policy effects, or aggregate productivity impacts, so it is somewhat indirect for the core project. The Resource-Based View suggests that for an organization to have a sustainable competitive advantage, the firm should have valuable, rare, inimitable resources and have the ability to exploit them. The Knowledge-Based View treats knowledge as an organizational resource, which resides in both the explicit and tacit knowledge held by organizations and their people. For MNEs, the tacit knowledge is transferred by the movement of knowledge workers, who take on a boundary-spanning role. However, this trend is in decline. With increasing barriers (formal and informal) to the movement of professionals, increased digitization, and Industry 4.0, the physical movement of professionals may not be...	João J. Ferreira, Cristina Fernandes, Ying Guo, et al.	Other
8	2011	The mobility of economists and the diffusion of policy ideas: The influence of economics on national policies ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the mobility of economists helps diffuse policy ideas across countries, which is analogous to worker mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion. It is not about firm-level labor market frictions or inventor mobility, but it directly examines how movement of skilled workers and consensus among experts shape the spread of innovations. Economic policies are innovations that have important effects on countries and their social welfare. Far from being simply technical in nature, such policies are often ideological innovations. This paper examines three economic policy innovations (privatization, central bank independence, and pension reform) and shows how the diffusion of these policies depended not only upon the mobility of American-trained Ph.D. economists to adopting countries, but also the state of agreement among economists on the value of these policy innovations. By estimating hazard models for adoption times, the effects of mobility and policy agreement are shown to explain the adoption patterns. The implications of...	Bruce Kogut, J. Muir Macpherson	Other
8	2000	Firm-Specific Training: Consequences for Job Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firm-specific and general training affect worker mobility, a key channel through which knowledge and skills move across firms. Its findings on on-the-job search, separations, and the incidence of firm-specific training are especially relevant for understanding labor market frictions and the costs of retaining workers with transferable human capital. This paper analyzes the impact of formal training on worker mobility. Using data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey, we find that on-the-job search activities and, to a smaller extent, actual job separations are significantly affected by both employer-provided and general training. Moreover, while the separation probability of searching workers is strongly affected by previous firm-provided training, no such effect shows up for non-searchers. This is consistent with the hypothesis that workers bear most of the cost of specific training.	Josef Zweimüller, Rudolf Winter‐Ebmer
8	2021	Skilled Labor Mobility and Firm Value: Evidence from Green Card Allocations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how mobility constraints on skilled workers affect firm outcomes, using exogenous variation in green card frictions as a labor market constraint. It speaks directly to the project’s themes of worker mobility and labor market frictions, though it focuses more on firm valuation and labor costs than on knowledge diffusion, spillovers, or innovation outcomes. Abstract This paper studies how the labor market frictions of skilled workers affect corporate valuation. The analysis features immigrant workers’ mobility constraints imposed by the U.S. green card application process and exploits exogenous variations caused by imperfections in the current immigration system. The study finds that relaxing mobility constraints negatively influences firm value. This effect is stronger for firms with higher labor adjustment costs. Reductions in investments and increases in labor costs are channels through which labor mobility adversely affects firm value. The findings suggest that monopoly rent over skilled workers is an important economic determinant of...	Mo Shen
8	2015	What Do We Know of the Mobility of Research Scientists and Impact on Scientific Production ↗ This chapter is closely related because it reviews researcher mobility and its impact on scientific production, which maps directly onto how worker movement facilitates knowledge creation and diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding mobility types, repeated moves, and productivity effects, though it is more focused on academic researchers than on firm-level labor market frictions or aggregate productivity. In this chapter we review the literature on the analysis of researcher mobility and productivity, highlighting recent changes in the research system-internationalization, intersector mobility, and collaboration and career diversification-which make researcher mobility more relevant for the dynamics of knowledge creation and dissemination. This review reveals that, to date, we still know little about the consequences and motivations of increased mobility for individual researchers. We contribute by presenting a typology of researcher mobility, and considering the relevance of multiple mobility events throughout a researcher career. Finally, we review the modeling problems related to...	Ana Fernández-Zubieta, Aldo Geuna, Cornelia Lawson
8	2016	Money secrets: How does trade secret legal protection affect firm market value? Evidence from the uniform trade secret act ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies trade secret protection as a labor-market friction affecting knowledge diffusion, with explicit heterogeneity by industries with high mobility of knowledge workers. While its main outcome is firm market value rather than innovation or aggregate productivity, it speaks directly to how legal restrictions on knowledge leakage interact with worker mobility and the value of firm-specific know-how. Research summary : We investigate the impact of trade secret legal protection on firm market value in the context of acquisitions. On one hand, market value may increase because trade secret assets become better protected from rivals. On the other hand, market value may decrease because trade secret protection reduces information about the target and its competitors available to potential buyers, increasing uncertainty about its value. Buyers will discount their offers in expectation of being compensated for riskier deals. Using a sample of private equity investments in the U nited S tates, we find that trade secret protection has a positive effect in industries with high mobility of...	Francesco Castellaneta, Raffaele Conti, Aleksandra Kacperczyk
8	2000	Is Mobility of Technical Personnel a Source of R&D Spillovers? This paper is closely related because it directly studies whether mobility of technical personnel generates R&D spillovers and frames the issue as knowledge transfer embodied in workers. It also speaks to your project’s themes of human capital transfer and labor-market internalization of knowledge externalities, though it focuses more on wage dynamics than on the broader effects of mobility frictions or policy. Labor mobility is often considered to be an important source of knowledge externalities, making it difficult for firms to appropriate returns to R&D investments. In this paper, I argue that inter-firm transfers of knowledge embodied in people should be analyzed within a human capital framework. Testing such a framework using a matched employer-employee data set, I find that the technical staff in R&D-intensive firms pays for the knowledge they accumulate on the job through lower wages in the beginning of their career. Later they earn a return on these implicit investments through higher wages. This suggests that the potential externalities associated with labor mobility, at least to some...	Jarle Møen
8	2016	Human Capital Driven Acquisition: Evidence from the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a labor market friction—the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine—affects firms’ ability to acquire human capital, directly linking employee mobility restrictions to knowledge access and diffusion through acquisitions. It also speaks to firm responses, retention of key workers, and performance effects, which are important for understanding how mobility frictions shape the organization of innovation and the transfer of skills across firms. We present evidence that the desire to gain human capital is an important motive for corporate acquisitions. Our tests exploit the staggered recognition of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S. state courts, which prevents employees with trade secret knowledge from working for other firms. We find a significant increase in the likelihood of being acquired for firms headquartered in states that recognize such a doctrine relative to firms headquartered in states that do not. Our result is stronger for firms with greater human capital and for firms whose employees have better ex ante employment mobility. We show that the IDD is positively associated with the retention of target...	Huasheng Gao, Yujing Ma
8	2023	The Power of Proximity to Coworkers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker proximity affects knowledge transfer, mentorship, and human capital development within firms, which are central mechanisms in labor-mediated diffusion of skills and ideas. While it does not focus on inter-firm mobility, non-competes, or innovation spillovers across employers, its evidence on coworker interaction and long-run career effects is highly relevant to understanding how labor market frictions and workplace organization shape knowledge diffusion. Amidst the rise of remote work, we ask: what are the effects of proximity to coworkers? We find being near coworkers has tradeoffs: proximity increases long-run human capital development at the expense of short-term output. We study software engineers at a Fortune 500 firm, whose main campus has two buildings several blocks apart. When offices were open, engineers working in the same building as all their teammates received 22 percent more online feedback than engineers with distant teammates. After offices closed for COVID-19, this advantage largely disappears. Yet sitting together reduces engineers' programming output, particularly for senior engineers. The tradeoffs from proximity are...	Natalia Emanuel, Emma Harrington, Amanda Pallais	Other
8	2022	The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies high-skilled worker mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion, focusing on immigrant inventors, collaboration patterns, and spillover effects on native innovators. While it does not directly analyze non-competes or other labor market frictions, it is highly relevant to the project’s themes of inventor mobility, technology transfer, and the aggregate innovation impact of cross-worker knowledge flows. We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation, both through their direct productivity as well as through their indirect spillover effects on their native collaborators. To do so, we link patent records to a database containing the first five digits of 160 million of Social Security Numbers (SSN). By combining this part of the SSN together with year of birth, we identify whether individuals are immigrants based on the age at which their Social Security Number is assigned. We find that over the course of their careers, immigrants are more productive than natives, as measured by number of patents, patent citations, and the economic value of these patents. Immigrant inventors...	Shai Bernstein, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, et al.
8	2020	Immigration, Innovation, and Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor mobility across borders affects innovation, knowledge creation, and local economic growth, which is central to the project’s interest in worker movement as a diffusion mechanism. However, it focuses on immigration rather than frictions like non-competes, inventor mobility within labor markets, or firm-level hiring and retention decisions, so it is complementary rather than core. We show a causal impact of immigration on innovation and growth in US counties. To identify the causal impact of immigration, we use 130 years of detailed data on migrations from foreign countries to US counties to isolate quasi-random variation in the ancestry composition of US counties; interacting this plausibly exogenous variation in ancestry composition with the recent inflows of migrants from different origins, we predict the total number of migrants flowing into each US county in recent decades. We show immigration has a positive causal impact on innovation, measured as patenting of local firms, and on economic growth, measured as real income growth for native workers. We interpret...	Konrad Burchardi, Thomas Chaney, Tarek A. Hassan, et al.
8	2012	Wages and health worker retention: Evidence from public sector wage reforms in Ghana ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how wage policy affects the retention and international migration of skilled workers, which is a key labor-mobility channel for knowledge diffusion. Its focus is on health professionals rather than inventors or engineers, but the evidence on mobility frictions, attrition, and retention incentives is directly relevant to how labor market policies shape the movement of human capital across borders. Can governments in developing countries retain skilled health workers by raising public sector wages? The author investigates this question using sudden, policy-induced wage variation, in which the Government of Ghana restructured the pay scale for government health workers. The author find that a ten percent increase in wages decreases annual attrition from the public payroll by 1.5 percentage points (from a mean of eight percentage points) among 20-35 year-old workers from professions that tend to migrate. As a result, the ten-year survival probability for these health workers increases from 0.43 to 0.52. The effects are concentrated among these young workers, and we do not detect effects...	James Antwi, David C. Phillips
8	2010	Sorting by search intensity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, endogenous search intensity, and sorting between heterogeneous workers and firms, all of which are central to how labor market frictions shape the allocation of talent. While it does not focus directly on knowledge diffusion or innovation, its matching framework and implications for worker-firm mobility are highly relevant for understanding the mechanisms through which skilled labor moves across firms. In this paper, I characterize matching in an on-the-job search model with endogenous search intensity, heterogeneous workers and firms, and match surplus is shared between workers and firms through bargaining. I provide proof of existence and uniqueness of steady state equilibrium. Given equally efficient matched and unmatched search, the worker skill conditional distribution of firm productivity over matches is stochastically increasing (decreasing) in worker skill if the production function is supermodular (submodular). I also show that this strong notion of sorting does not obtain everywhere for the firm productivity conditional match distribution. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.	Rasmus Lentz
8	2023	Common Institutional Ownership and Product Market Threats ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how ownership structures shape product market competition and knowledge spillovers, which directly connects to technology diffusion and the incentives for firms to invest in product development. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its emphasis on spillovers, dynamism, and how policy may affect innovation and diffusion makes it highly relevant background for the project. The common ownership of firms can have anticompetitive effects by incentivizing collusive outcomes that maximize joint surpluses of the commonly held firms or procompetitive effects through enhanced knowledge spillovers. Using a difference-in-differences regression methodology that exploits mergers between financial institutions as exogenous shocks to common ownership, our baseline results suggest that higher common ownership leads to greater product market fluidity (a text-based metric of competition) and generally leads to more product development and higher investments. These findings suggest that, on average, common ownership spurs dynamism in product spaces rather than tacit collusion...	Omesh Kini, Sangho Lee, Mo Shen
8	2000	On the importance of geographic and technological proximity for R&D spillovers : an empirical investigation This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge and R&D spillovers diffuse across firms, which is central to understanding technology transfer and productivity effects in your project. Its focus on geographic and technological proximity helps explain when spillovers are localized versus broader, though it does not directly analyze worker mobility, labor-market frictions, or policy restrictions like non-competes. Empirical studies of the external effects of R&D suggest that both geographic and technological distance attenuate inter-firm spillovers from innovative activity. The results presented here indicate that the tendency for R&D spillovers to localize economic activity is conditional on the technological relation between spillover generating and receiving firms. The production function framework is generalized to control for correlation between measures of geographic and technological proximity. Coefficient estimates confirm that R&D spillovers are largest among technological neighbors. However, spillovers within narrowly defined technological groups do not appear to be attenuated by distance...	Michael J. Orlando
8	2013	Quantifying the Contribution of Search to Wage Inequality ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search frictions and job-to-job mobility, which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape worker movement and the allocation of labor across firms. While it focuses on wage inequality rather than technology diffusion or knowledge spillovers, its quantitative model of job transitions and nonvalue-improving moves is highly relevant to the mobility mechanisms in the project. We empirically establish that one-third of job transitions leads to wage losses. Using a quantitative on-the-job search model, we find that 60 percent of them are movements down the job ladder. Accounting for them, our baseline calibration matches the large residual wage inequality in US data while attributing only 13.7 percent of overall wage inequality to the presence of search frictions in the labor market. We can trace the difference between ours and previous much higher estimates to our explicit modeling of nonvalue improving job-to-job transitions. (JEL J24, J31, J64)	Volker Tjaden, Felix Wellschmied
8	2013	Preparing to Export ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a mechanism for transferring export-market knowledge across firms, specifically through firms hiring employees with prior exporter experience. It is highly relevant to the project’s themes of knowledge diffusion, labor market frictions, and firm hiring responses to external opportunities, though it focuses on export expertise rather than broader technology or innovation spillovers. Exporters differ markedly in export-market performance. We document that this heterogeneity is not strongly reflected in workforce education or occupations but it closely relates to the presence of a few workers with prior export experience. We employ a novel identification strategy to isolate how a firm's hiring decision at home responds to exogenous changes in product demand abroad. Combining Brazilian exporter and linked employer-employee data, we show that firms act on favorable export market conditions by hiring workers with prior experience from incumbent exporters in preparation to export. We find that firms concentrate this preparatory hiring of experts in skilled blue-collar...	Claudio Labanca, Danielken Molina, Marc-Andreas Muendler
8	2022	Entrepreneurship, the initial labor force, and the location of new firms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility and knowledge transfer through spinoffs, showing how founders use prior employment networks to recruit workers and how this shapes firm location and performance. It speaks to diffusion mechanisms via labor market relationships and local clustering, though it is more about entrepreneurship and hiring than explicit frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. We propose that new firm founders locate their firms close to their home region in order to hire workers they know about through their prior employment, since it is easier to find high productivity employees among talent pools for which you have significant personal experience. We test our proposition using a matched employer–employee dataset for Portugal. Consistent with our predictions, new firms in the same industry as their founder’s prior employer (i.e., spinoffs) are more likely to locate in their founder’s home region, to hire workers from the founder’s prior employer and other firms in the same region and industry, to employ them longer, and to perform better than other new firms...	Cristina Carias, Steven Klepper, Rui Baptista
8	2023	How Do Restrictions on High-Skilled Immigration Affect Offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B Program ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how restrictions on skilled worker mobility shape firms’ responses in knowledge-intensive activities, especially R&D-heavy jobs. It is particularly relevant to the project’s interest in labor market frictions and the direction of knowledge diffusion, showing that firms may substitute offshoring for constrained high-skill immigration. Highly skilled workers are not only a crucial and relatively scarce input into firms’ productive and innovative processes, but are also a critical resource determining competitive advantage. An increasingly high proportion of these workers in the United States were born abroad and permitted to work on skilled worker visas. How do multinational firms respond when artificial constraints, namely, policies restricting skilled immigration, are placed on their ability to hire scarce human capital? This paper combines visa microdata and comprehensive data on U.S. multinational firm activity to demonstrate that firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate...	Britta Glennon
8	2018	On the Returns to Invention within Firms: Evidence from Finland ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how invention generates private returns that are distributed within firms among inventors, coworkers, and entrepreneurs, which speaks to how firms capture and allocate gains from knowledge creation. While it does not directly analyze worker mobility or diffusion across firms, its evidence on within-firm spillovers and invention incentives is highly relevant to understanding how knowledge is produced and transmitted in innovation systems. In this paper we merge individual income data, firm-level data, patenting data, and IQ data in Finland over the period 1988-2012 to analyze the returns to invention for inventors and their coworkers or stakeholders within the same firm. We find that: (i) inventors collect only 8 percent of the total private return from invention; (ii) entrepreneurs get over 44 percent of the total gains; (iii) bluecollar workers get about 26 percent of the gains and the rest goes to white-collar workers. Moreover, entrepreneurs start with significant negative returns prior to the patent application, but their returns subsequently become highly positive.	Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Ari Hyytinen, et al.
8	2021	Firm Dynamics, On-the-Job Search, and Labor Market Fluctuations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, worker mobility, and firm dynamics, which are central mechanisms in the diffusion of knowledge and skills across firms. While it does not focus explicitly on technology spillovers or inventor mobility, its treatment of labor market frictions, quit flows, and endogenous misallocation is highly relevant for understanding how worker movement shapes firm outcomes and aggregate efficiency. Abstract We devise a tractable model of firm dynamics with on-the-job search. The model admits analytical solutions for equilibrium outcomes, including quit, layoff, hiring, and vacancy-filling rates, as well as the distributions of job values, a fundamental challenge posed by the environment. Optimal labor demand takes a novel form whereby hiring firms allow their marginal product to diffuse over an interval. The evolution of the marginal product over this interval endogenously exhibits gradual mean reversion, evoking a notion of imperfect labor market competition. This in turn contributes to dispersion in marginal products, giving rise to endogenous misallocation. Quantitatively, the...	Michael Elsby, Axel Gottfries
8	2006	Anatomy of Cluster Development: Emergence and Convergence in the US Human Biotherapeutics, 1976–2003 ↗ This chapter is closely related because it studies how entrepreneur and firm mobility within biotech clusters drives the emergence and growth of regional innovation ecosystems. Its emphasis on workers leaving established firms to found new firms speaks directly to knowledge spillovers, labor mobility, and diffusion of capabilities across firms, though it is more about entrepreneurship and clustering than formal labor-market frictions or non-competes. Abstract This chapter examines the spatial and temporal dimension of a variety of forms of entrepreneurship across cities in the United States in the human biotherapeutics. The first finding is that clusters grow predominantly through the investments of local entrepreneurs, local firms, and local venture capitalists. Second, for three of the regions with the largest clusters — San Diego, Boston, and San Francisco — the critical spur to growth appears to be a tendency of entrepreneurs to leave local, established firms to found additional firms. Moreover, only those regions, however, that exhibited this secondary, or second-generation growth grew to substantial sizes relative to other...	Elaine Romanelli, Maryann P. Feldman
8	2022	Competing for digital human capital: The retention effect of digital expertise in MNC subsidiaries ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly concerns retention of digital expertise in multinational subsidiaries, which is closely tied to worker mobility, firm competition for skilled labor, and the internal diffusion of knowledge across organizational units. It likely speaks to how firms manage and retain human capital that embodies technology and know-how, though it may be more focused on retention within MNCs than on broader labor market frictions or aggregate innovation effects. No abstract available.	Christoph Grimpe, Wolfgang Sofka, Ulrich Kaiser
8	2016	Migrant entrepreneurs and local networks in industrial districts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how migrant entrepreneurs interact with local firm networks and how those linkages can stimulate trade flows and knowledge diffusion across firms. It is not a direct study of worker mobility or labor market frictions like non-competes, but it is highly relevant to understanding how movement of people and firms affects technology diffusion and local productivity. Migrant firms are increasing in local manufacturing systems. Their presence is expected to generate beneficial effects in host regions by stimulating trade flows and knowledge diffusion. However, the opportunity for migrant entrepreneurs to prosper depends on their ability to establish linkages with the local firm networks. Using an innovative database on Italian micro and small businesses, this paper investigates the performance of a sample of migrant and indigenous firms, providing evidence of a significant gap. The results suggest that manufacturing systems that exclude migrant firms are missing a key opportunity to integrate a valuable source of diversity.	Jacopo Canello
8	2016	Do return requirements increase international knowledge diffusion? Evidence from the Fulbright program ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a labor-market policy that restricts post-training mobility affects the international diffusion of scientific knowledge through inventor/scientist location choices and citation flows. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on mobility frictions, knowledge spillovers, and the direction of diffusion across countries, though it is more about return migration and citation-based diffusion than firm-level worker mobility or non-compete enforcement. We ask whether policies designed to encourage return migration of scientists increase knowledge diffusion to and from home countries, as measured by citations to articles in STEM journals. We track the post-PhD careers of 249 Fulbright Fellowship recipients who are required to leave the US after PhD receipt and 249 similar foreign-born "control" scientists not subject to return requirements. We find that articles by Fulbright Fellows from countries with a weak science base are cited more frequently in their home countries than articles by control scientists, and that this is due primarily to the fact that they are more likely to locate in their home country. In addition, all Fulbrights...	Shulamit Kahn, Megan MacGarvie
8	2023	Global value chains and domestic innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firm innovation responds to network position in global value chains, with an emphasis on knowledge spillovers from customers and downstream markets. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it speaks to the broader mechanism of technology diffusion across firms and the channels through which knowledge is transmitted. This paper explores how changes in both position and participation in Global Value Chain networks affect firm innovation. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data for Japan with measures of GVC network centrality and GVC participation utilizing the OECD Inter-Country Input-Output Tables for the period 1995 to 2011. We find that Japan's position in the GVCs has shifted from being at the core of Asian value chains towards the periphery relative to other countries in the network, i.e. becoming less "central". We use China's WTO accession as an instrumental variable for changes in Japanese centrality. Our analysis shows that increases in forward centrality â€“ as a key supplier - tends to...	Keiko Ito, Kenta Ikeuchi, Chiara Criscuolo, et al.	Other
8	2023	Measuring the International Mobility of Inventors: A New Database ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly measures inventor mobility, which is a central channel for technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers in your project. It provides a database and descriptive evidence on international inventor migration and brain drain, useful for studying how worker movement shapes innovation and aggregate knowledge flows. This paper has two objectives. First, it describes a new database mapping migratory patterns of inventors, extracted from information included in patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. We explain in detail the information contained in the database and discuss the usefulness and reliability of the underlying data. Second, the paper provides a descriptive overview of inventor migration patterns, based on the information contained in the newly constructed database. Among the largest receiving countries, we find that the United States exhibits by far the highest inventor immigration rate, followed by Australia and Canada. European countries lag behind in attracting...	Ernest Miguélez, Carsten Fink
8	2018	Tapping into the knowledge of incumbents: The role of corporate venture capital investments and inventor mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a channel for transferring incumbent knowledge to new ventures, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also adds an important institutional angle by examining how corporate venture capital interacts with hiring to shape the use and diffusion of firms’ technological knowledge. Research Summary This article investigates the impact of corporate venture capital (CVC) investments and inventors' mobility on the extent to which new ventures use incumbents' knowledge resources as inputs for their innovation activities. Our findings suggest that ventures receiving CVC investments draw less on investors' knowledge, while inventor mobility increases the extent to which an incumbent's technological knowledge is used by recipient ventures. Ventures combining CVC investments and inventor mobility from the same incumbent are selected for drawing less on that incumbent's patents, but these citation flows increase in the period after investment and the inventors' hiring events...	Francesco Di Lorenzo, Vareska van de Vrande
8	2019	Corporate Investment and Innovation in the Presence of Competitor Constraints ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms respond to rival constraints by changing investment, patenting, and opportunistic hiring, which directly connects to competition-driven innovation and labor market behavior. While it does not center on worker mobility frictions like non-competes or inventor movement, its focus on hiring and patent-based strategic responses makes it highly relevant to knowledge diffusion and firm-level innovation dynamics. Abstract We study the relation between investment behavior and competitor financial constraints. Using interfirm patent citations and text-based product market similarities to identify intransitive competitor networks, we find that firms increase investment spending, patenting activity, and opportunistic hiring when competitor constraints become more binding. In addition, firms shift their investment composition (product market and patent portfolios) to compete more aggressively with relatively constrained competitors. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we exploit the 2004 AJCA tax holiday and the 1989 junk bond crisis as exogenous shocks to competitor constraints, and we find similar...	William Grieser, Zack Liu
8	2005	The Burden of Knowledge and the 'Death of the Renaissance Man': Is Innovation Getting Harder? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the accumulation of knowledge changes the organization and productivity of innovative activity, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and growth. Although it does not focus on worker mobility, non-competes, or labor market frictions directly, its emphasis on specialization, teamwork, and inventor behavior provides important background on how knowledge is produced and transmitted within innovation systems. This paper investigates, theoretically and empirically, a possibly fundamental aspect of technological progress. If knowledge accumulates as technology progresses, then successive generations of innovators may face an increasing educational burden. Innovators can compensate in their education by seeking narrower expertise, but narrowing expertise will reduce their individual capacities, with implications for the organization of innovative activity -a greater reliance on teamwork -and negative implications for growth. I develop a formal model of this "knowledge burden mechanism" and derive six testable predictions for innovators. Over time, educational attainment will rise while increased...	B. J. P. Jones
8	2017	Are All Spillovers Created Equal? A Network Perspective on Information Technology Labor Movements ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interfirm labor mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion and measures how the structure of labor-flow networks affects firm productivity. Its focus on IT workers transmitting innovative practices directly connects to the project’s themes of skilled-worker spillovers, firm-level hiring, and the productivity consequences of worker movement, though it is less about frictions like non-competes or policy interventions. This study examines how characteristics of an interfirm labor-flow network affect firm productivity. Using employee job histories to trace labor movement between organizations, we construct labor-flow networks for both information technology (IT) and non-IT labor and analyze how a firm’s network structure for the two types of labor affects its performance. We find that hiring IT workers from a structurally diverse network of firms can substantially improve firm productivity, but that the same is not true for non-IT labor, where we find little benefit of network diversity. We hypothesize that these results reflect differences in the types of knowledge diffusion facilitated by different types...	Lynn Wu, Fujie Jin, Lorin M. Hitt
8	2014	How to kill inventors: testing the Massacrator© algorithm for inventor disambiguation ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it focuses on inventor mobility and how data quality in inventor disambiguation affects empirical studies of mobility, networking, and inventor productivity. While it is primarily a methods paper rather than a substantive analysis of knowledge diffusion, it directly supports research on tracking worker movement and measuring its effects on innovation and spillovers. Inventor disambiguation is an increasingly important issue for users of patent data. We propose and test a number of refinements to the original Massacrator algorithm, originally proposed by Lissoni et al. (The keins database on academic inventors: methodology and contents, 2006) and now applied to APE-INV, a free access database funded by the European Science Foundation. Following Raffo and Lhuillery (Res Policy 38:1617–1627, 2009) we describe disambiguation as a three step process: cleaning&parsing, matching, and filtering. By means of sensitivity analysis, based on MonteCarlo simulations, we show how various filtering criteria can be manipulated in order to obtain optimal combinations of...	Michele Pezzoni, Francesco Lissoni, Gianluca Tarasconi
8	2020	Declining Search Frictions, Unemployment, and Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies search frictions in the labor market and how changes in those frictions affect worker transitions, matching, and aggregate growth. While it does not focus specifically on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its search-theoretic framework is highly relevant for understanding how labor market frictions shape the movement of workers that can transmit skills and ideas across firms. For a search-theoretic model of the labor market, we seek conditions for the existence of a balanced growth path (BGP), where unemployment, vacancy, and worker’s transitions rates remain constant in the face of improvements in the production and search technologies. A BGP exists iff firm-worker matches are inspection goods and the quality of a match is drawn from a Pareto distribution. Declining search frictions contribute to growth with an intensity determined by the tail coefficient of the Pareto distribution. We develop a strategy to measure the rate of decline of search frictions and their contribution to growth.	Paolo Martellini, Guido Menzio
8	2016	Migration, Knowledge Diffusion and the Comparative Advantage of Nations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies migration as a channel for knowledge diffusion across countries, which is central to understanding how worker movement transfers technology and productive know-how. Its focus on skilled migrants and the resulting expansion of export baskets provides strong evidence on the macro-level effects of labor mobility on diffusion and comparative advantage, though it is less about firm-level frictions like non-competes or hiring policies. Do migrants shape the dynamic comparative advantage of their sending and receiving countries? To answer this question we study the drivers of knowledge diffusion by looking at the dynamics of the export basket of countries, with particular focus on migration. The fact that knowledge diffusion requires direct human interaction implies that the international diffusion of knowledge should follow the pattern of international migration. This is what this paper documents. Our main finding is that migration, and particularly skilled immigration, is a strong and robust driver of productive knowledge diffusion as measured by the appearance and growth of tradable goods in the migrants' receiving and...	Dany Bahar, Hillel Rapoport
8	2015	Remote collaboration and innovative performance: the moderating role of R&D intensity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how geographically distant collaboration affects innovation through the transfer of tacit knowledge, which is a key channel in knowledge diffusion. It is not primarily about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but the focus on remote search, knowledge transfer, and absorptive capacity makes it highly relevant to the project’s broader diffusion and innovation themes. Collaboration with geographically distant partners may enhance a firm’s innovative performance. In practice, however, this may be complicated as personal contacts are more limited so that effective search and transfer of remote partners’ tacit knowledge is hampered. We tested the potential moderating role of R&D intensity which, by indicating technology-oriented absorptive capacity, may mitigate the problems associated with remote collaboration. Drawing on survey data of 248 high-tech small firms, we find that remote collaboration is positively related with innovation performance, but at low R&D intensity, the relationship vanishes.	Luca Berchicci, Jeroen P.J. de Jong, Mark Freel
8	2004	COMPLEXITY, NETWORKS AND KNOWLEDGE FLOW. ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge diffuses across firm, geographic, and technological boundaries, which is central to the project’s focus on technology spillovers and worker-mediated knowledge transfer. Although it does not focus specifically on labor market frictions or worker mobility, its mechanisms of knowledge transmission and barriers to diffusion are highly relevant for understanding how mobility constraints affect the spread of innovation. Because knowledge plays an important role in wealth creation, economic actors may attempt to skew the flow of knowledge in their favor. Managers of a firm may seek to spread knowledge widely within their organization but prevent its diffusion to rivals, for instance. We ask, when will knowledge developed in one area of dense social connections - such as a firm, a geographic locale, or a technological community - diffuse to the edge of that area but not further? Marrying an understanding of social networks with a view of knowledge transfer as a search process, we argue that the degree of knowledge inequality across social boundaries depends crucially on the nature of the knowledge. Simple...	Olav Sorenson, Jan W. Rivkin, Lee Fleming
8	2020	From litigation to innovation: Firms' ability to litigate and technological diversification through human capital ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility and the ability to hire human capital from competitors shape firms’ technological diversification, which is central to knowledge diffusion through labor markets. Its focus on litigation ability and IP safeguards adds an important legal friction dimension, and the findings that effects are stronger when interfirm mobility is low speak directly to how mobility frictions alter technology transfer. Abstract Research Summary When firms diversify technologically, they often acquire human capital from competitors. Legal challenges emerge when intellectual property (IP) safeguards are involved. We examine a firm's ability to initiate IP litigation or protect against litigation (i.e., litigation ability) as an antecedent to its technological diversification. We demonstrate that an unexpected reduction in firm's litigation ability is associated with a temporary decline in its entry into new technological domains. Furthermore, we find that the negative effect is stronger when the firm's existing inventors cannot be easily utilized in the new domain or when interfirm mobility in the new...	Martin Ganco, Cameron Miller, Puay Khoon Toh
8	2014	What are the Channels for Technology Sourcing? Panel Data Evidence from German Companies ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility across countries as a channel for technology diffusion, showing how German firms benefit from inventors based in the United States. It also speaks to the productivity consequences of knowledge transfer through worker location and collaboration, which aligns with the project’s focus on mobility-driven spillovers and aggregate innovation effects. Innovation processes within corporations increasingly tap into international technology sources, yet little is known about the relative contribution of different types of innovation channels. We investigate the effectiveness of different types of international technology sourcing activities using survey information on German companies complemented with information from the European Patent Office. German firms with inventors based in the United States disproportionately benefit from R&D knowledge located in the United States. The positive influence on total factor productivity is larger if the research of the inventors results in coapplications of patents with US companies. Moreover...	Dietmar Harhoff, Elisabeth Mueller, John Van Reenen
8	2019	The Impacts of Restricting Mobility of Skilled Service Workers ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how restricting the mobility of skilled workers affects labor market outcomes, which is central to the project’s focus on mobility frictions and knowledge diffusion. Although the abstract shown does not specify technology spillovers or innovation outcomes, the title strongly suggests an important empirical context for understanding how limits on worker movement shape the transfer of skills and potentially the diffusion of knowledge across employers. Kurt Lavetti⇑, Carol Simon and William D. White Kurt Lavetti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Ohio State University. Carol Simon is a Senior Vice President at The Lewin Group. William D. White is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. corresponding author (lavetti.1{at}osu.edu).	Kurt Lavetti, Carol Simon, William D. White
8	2018	The Cyclical Job Ladder ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on worker mobility, search frictions, and job-to-job transitions as the mechanism reallocating labor across firms, which is directly relevant to how mobility shapes the diffusion of knowledge and productivity. While it does not focus specifically on inventor mobility, non-competes, or technology spillovers, its review of firm-to-firm reallocation and the role of frictions in shutting down mobility in recessions provides useful background for the project. Many theories of labor market turnover generate a job ladder. Due to search frictions, workers earn rents from employment. All workers agree on which jobs are, in this sense, more desirable and slowly climb the job ladder through job-to-job quits. Occasionally, negative shocks throw them off the ladder and back into unemployment. We review a recent body of theory and empirical evidence on labor market turnover through the lens of the job ladder. We focus on the critical role that the job ladder plays in transmitting aggregate shocks, through the pace and direction of employment reallocation, to economic activity and wages and in shaping business cycles more generally. The main evidence...	Giuseppe Moscarini, Fabien Postel‐Vinay
8	2020	The Impact of Open Access Mandates on Invention ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a policy that removes barriers to knowledge diffusion and measures how that changes downstream invention, which is central to the project’s interest in technology and knowledge spillovers. Although it focuses on academic access rather than worker mobility or labor market frictions, the search-for-knowledge mechanism and patent citation outcomes make it highly relevant for understanding how diffusion constraints affect innovation. Abstract How do barriers to the diffusion of academic research affect innovation? In 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandated free online availability of funded research. This policy caused a 50 percentage point increase in free access to funded articles. We introduce a novel measure, in-text patent citations, to study how this mandate affected industry use of academic science. After 2008, patents cite NIH-funded research 12% to 27% more often. Nonfunded research, funded research in journals unaffected by the mandate, and academic citations see no change. These estimates are consistent with a model of search for useful knowledge. Inefficiency caused by academic publishing may...	Kevin A. Bryan, Yasin Ozcan
8	2008	Firm-level social returns to education ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how workers’ general skills are transmitted within firms through coworker interactions, which is a form of knowledge diffusion central to the project. It does not focus on mobility frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes, but its firm-level learning mechanism and matched employer-employee evidence are highly relevant for understanding how labor composition affects spillovers and productivity. Do workers benefit from the education of their co-workers? We examine this question first by introducing a model of learning, which argues that educated workers may transfer part of their general skills to uneducated workers, and then by examining detailed matched employer-employee panel data from Portugal. We find evidence of large firm-level social returns (between 14% and 23%), much larger than standard estimates of private returns, and of significant returns accruing to less educated workers but not to their more educated colleagues. © Springer-Verlag 2008.	Pedro S. Martins, Jim Y. Jin
8	2022	Chilling effects of patent trolls ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patent litigation by non-practicing entities affects technology peers through spillovers in litigation risk, market value, and R&D responses. While it is not directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, it speaks to knowledge diffusion and innovation incentives across firms, including how external threats shape workaround innovation and patent quality. We find that non-practicing entities (NPEs) exhibit a unique legal strategy of sequential rounds: (1) subject to the same patent, NPE plaintiffs file approximately seven follow-on lawsuits after the initial lawsuit; and (2) when a firm is sued by NPEs, the likelihood of its technology peers being sued increases by 14 % in the subsequent year. Defendants' technology peers experience significant market value losses around the lawsuit filing date. Moreover, defendants' technology peers respond to NPE litigation risk by increasing R&D investments to develop workaround technologies. However, the increase in R&D incrementally generates fewer patent citations or patents with lower values. Thus...	Feng Chen, Yu Hou, Jiaping Qiu, et al.
8	2009	The effect of collaboration network on inventors' job match, productivity and tenure ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility, hiring, and how collaboration networks affect job matching, productivity, and tenure. Although it does not directly analyze knowledge diffusion or non-compete policies, it speaks to the labor-market frictions and matching channels through which skilled-worker movement can shape innovation outcomes. It has been argued in the economic literature that job search through informal job networks improves the employer-employee match quality. This paper argues that inventors' research collaboration networks reduce the uncertainty of firms about the match qualities of inventors prior to hiring. We estimate the effect of inventors' collaboration networks on their productivity and mobility using the U.S. patent application database. It is found that networked inventors are more productive and have longer tenure than non-networked inventors. The evidence from fixed-effect regressions shows that the higher productivity and longer tenure of networked inventors are not solely attributable to...	Ryo Nakajima, Ryuichi Tamura, Nobuyuki Hanaki
8	2005	The International Dynamics of R&D and Innovation in the Short and in the Long Run ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies international knowledge spillovers, R&D, and innovation dynamics, which are central to understanding how ideas diffuse across firms and economies. However, it does not focus on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or the role of inventor movement as the transmission mechanism, so it is more about aggregate knowledge flows than labor-mediated diffusion. In this paper we estimate the dynamic relationship between employment in R&D and generation of knowledge as measured by patent applications across OECD countries. In several recently developed models, known as `idea-based' models of growth, the afore mentioned "idea-generating" process is the engine of productivity growth. Moreover, in real business cycle models technological shocks are an important source of fluctuations. Our empirical strategy is able to test whether knowledge spillovers are strong enough to generate sustained endogenous growth and to estimate the quantitative impact of international knowledge on technological innovation of a country in the short and in the long run. We...	Laura Bottazzi, Giovanni Peri
8	2007	Labor-Market Fluctuations and On-the-Job Search ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because on-the-job search is a central mechanism through which workers move between firms, potentially transmitting skills, ideas, and productivity-relevant knowledge. Labor-market fluctuations also suggest a focus on matching frictions and firm-worker reallocation, which are closely tied to worker mobility, hiring, and diffusion dynamics even if the paper may not directly study invention or non-competes. No abstract available.	Éva Nagypál
8	2012	Innovating in the periphery: The impact of local and foreign inventor mobility on the value of Indian patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility across firms and borders as a mechanism for technology diffusion and patent value creation, which is central to your project. It also speaks to how foreign versus local labor mobility affects innovation outcomes in an emerging economy, although it is more focused on patent impact than on broader labor market frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes. Abstract We examine the impact of local and foreign labor mobility in India by modeling one regional and one global network, each of which captures the inter-organizational mobility of inventors. Our analysis of the regional network shows that, within India, the productivity of inventors does not improve when they move from foreign to Indian organizations. In the global network, we find that Indian organizations remain located in the periphery as a result of employing a small number of inventors from foreign organizations. However, in the instances when inventors are hired from foreign organizations, they are able to produce patents with a higher impact in comparison to inventors hired from...	Tufool Alnuaimi, Tore Opsahl, Gerard George
8	2016	The Role of Interfirm Knowledge Spillovers for Innovation in Mass-Produced Environmental Technologies: Evidence from the Solar Photovoltaic Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interfirm knowledge spillovers and how firms absorb external knowledge to innovate, which is central to understanding technology diffusion across firms. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, but its firm-level evidence on spillovers and absorptive capacity is highly relevant background for the project. Knowledge spillovers play a potentially important role for innovation and competitive dynamics in mass-produced environmental technologies. Currently, however, we lack research that studies knowledge spillovers in such technologies at the firm level. To address this shortcoming, in this article we investigate the drivers of technological innovation in the solar photovoltaic industry. We find clear evidence for the existence of interfirm knowledge spillovers and show that besides investments in R&D, investments in manufacturing equipment have served as a channel of knowledge absorption. Our findings shed new light on the narrative linking environmental innovation and competitive advantage...	Joern Hoppmann
8	—	Industrial Espionage and Productivity This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion and productivity catch-up through the transfer of knowledge across firms and sectors, which is central to understanding how information flows affect innovation and growth. Although it focuses on espionage rather than worker mobility, it provides strong evidence on the economic value of non-market knowledge transfer and the role of high-quality information in narrowing TFP gaps. In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage by linking information from East Germany's foreign intelligence service to sector-specific gaps in total factor productivity (TFP) between West and East Germany. Based on a dataset that comprises the entire flow of information provided by East German informants over the period 1970-1989, we document a significant narrowing of sectoral West-to-East TFP gaps as a result of East Germany's industrial espionage. This central finding holds across a wide range of specifications and is robust to the inclusion of several alternative proxies for technology transfer. We further demonstrate that the economic returns to...	Eric Meyersson, Albrecht Glitz
8	2005	Job-Hopping in Silicon Valley: Some Evidence Concerning the Micro-Foundations of a High Technology Cluster ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a mechanism for reallocating talent and diffusing innovation within a high-technology cluster. It also directly connects mobility patterns to non-compete enforceability in California, which is central to understanding how labor market frictions shape knowledge diffusion and inventive activity. Observers of Silicon Valley's computer cluster report that employees move rapidly between competing firms, but evidence supporting this claim is scarce. Job-hopping is important in computer clusters because it facilitates the reallocation of talent and resources toward firms with superior innovations. Using new data on labor mobility, we find higher rates of job-hopping for college-educated men in Silicon Valley's computer industry than in computer clusters located out of the state. Mobility rates in other California computer clusters are similar to Silicon Valley's, suggesting some role for features of California law that make noncompete agreements unenforceable. Consistent with our model...	Bruce Fallick, Charles A. Fleischman, James B. Rebitzer
8	2021	Labor Market Frictions and Moving Costs of the Employed and Unemployed ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market frictions, worker mobility, and moving costs that shape outside options and employer monopsony power. While it does not focus on technology diffusion or skilled/inventor mobility directly, its dynamic search-and-location framework is highly relevant for understanding how frictions affect worker movement and firm incentives. Search frictions and switching costs may grant monopsony power to incumbent employers by reducing workers' outside options. This paper examines the role of labor market frictions and moving costs in explaining worker flows across U.S. labor markets. Using data on non-college-educated workers from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), I estimate a dynamic model of job search and location choice. I find that moving costs are substantial and that labor market frictions primarily inhibit the employed. Reducing these frictions would result in a higher wage elasticity of labor supply to the firm and could reduce employer monopsony power.	Tyler Ransom
8	2002	Knowledge Flows and Knowledge Externalities ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies knowledge diffusion, patent-based spillovers, and how geographic and technological distance shape the flow of ideas across regions, which is central to understanding technology diffusion. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it provides important evidence on the mechanisms and aggregate effects of knowledge externalities that underpin the project. The diffusion of knowledge in the world generates positive externalities if knowledge flows increase the productivity of R&D. Our work analyzes knowledge diffusion and knowledge externalities in generating innovation and in determining productivity. We first estimate the determinants of knowledge flows across 141 sub-national regions in 19 countries of Europe and North America as revealed by patent citation between US-granted patents. Then we estimate the impact of these flows on productivity of R&D resources in generating innovation (patenting) and productivity (TFP). While we find that knowledge diffusion depends on geographical and technological distance and is well described by a...	Giovanni Peri
8	1999	Are there International RandD Spillovers Among Randomly Matched Trade Partners? A Response to Keller ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies international R&D spillovers, which are a form of knowledge diffusion across firms and countries. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it is directly relevant to the broader question of how technology and knowledge spread through an economy and across organizational boundaries. reexamines Coe and He1pman's (1995) analysis of international R&D spillovers focusing on the weights used to define the foreign R&D capital stock. Keller creates "random" weights and shows that they give rise to positive estimates of international R&D spillovers, casting doubts on the robustness ofCoe and Helpman's findings. We show that Keller's "random" weights are essentially simple averages with a random error. We derive alternative random weights and present regressions showing that when they are used to define the foreign R&D capital stock, the estimated international R&D spillover estimates are nonexistent, as would be expected.	David T. Coe, Alexander W. Hoffmaister, DCoe@imf.org, et al.
8	2020	Clustering and Connectedness: How Inventor Network Configurations within Incumbent Firms Influence Their Assimilation and Absorption of New Venture Technologies ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor network structure inside incumbent firms affects the assimilation and absorption of technologies originating from new ventures, which is central to knowledge diffusion through skilled-worker and inventor channels. It is especially relevant for understanding how firm organization shapes technology transfer and spillovers, though it focuses more on internal network configuration than on labor mobility frictions or policy constraints like non-competes. We explore how an incumbent firm’s internal inventor network configuration influences its ability to assimilate and absorb new venture technologies. We find that incumbents that have internal inven...	Ji Youn Kim, H. Kevin Steensma, Ralph A. Heidl
8	2014	Relational Contracts in Competitive Labour Markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, worker retention, wage dispersion, and endogenous job ladders, all of which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape worker mobility and firm-level knowledge transmission. Although it is not directly about technology diffusion or non-competes, its relational-contract framework links hiring and retention incentives to productivity differences in a way that is highly relevant to the project’s broader labor mobility and firm dynamics themes. We analyze a large, anonymous labour market in which firms motivate their workers via relational contracts. The market is frictionless and features on-the-job search, in that all acceptable vacancies are immediately filled and the employed compete with the unemployed for vacancies. While firms and workers are ex ante identical, the unique equilibrium exhibits a continuous distribution of contracts in which high wage firms have higher retention rates, more motivated workers and higher productivity. The model thus generates dispersion in wages, productivity and human resource strategies, and gives rise to endogenous job ladders. An exogenous increase in on-the-job search increases the...	Simon Board, Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn
8	1996	Embodied Technology Diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion across industries and countries, which is central to understanding how knowledge spreads in the economy. However, it focuses on embodied diffusion through capital and intermediate goods rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or inventor movement, so it is adjacent rather than directly on target. This paper examines the process of embodied technology diffusion in 10 OECD countries with the help of a methodology whereby the purchases of intermediate and capital goods act as carriers of technology across industries and countries. In terms of supply and demand of technology, it establishes that while innovations are developed mainly in a cluster of high technology manufacturing industries, a different cluster of industries in the services sector are the main acquirers of technologically sophisticated machinery and equipment. R&D performance is more concentrated (the top 5 industries account for between 60-80% of total) than technology use (the top 5 user industries account in most...	George Papaconstantinou, Norihisa Sakurai, Andrew Wyckoff
8	2020	The Paper Trail of Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from Patent Interferences ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge spillovers among inventors occur and shows that geographic proximity facilitates tacit knowledge flows, which is central to diffusion through worker/inventor mobility. It does not directly analyze labor market frictions like non-competes or hiring/retention behavior, but it provides strong evidence on the spatial barriers and mechanisms governing knowledge transfer. We show evidence of localized knowledge spillovers using a new database of US patent interferences terminated between 1998 and 2014. Interferences resulted when two or more independent parties submitted identical claims of invention nearly simultaneously. Following the idea that inventors of identical inventions share common knowledge inputs, interferences provide a new method for measuring knowledge spillovers. Interfering inventors are 1.4 to 4.0 times more likely to live in the same local area than matched control pairs of inventors. They are also more geographically concentrated than citation-linked inventors. Our results emphasize geographic distance as a barrier to tacit knowledge...	Ina Ganguli, Jeffrey Lin, Nicholas Reynolds
8	2019	The Dynamics of Learning and Competition in Schumpeterian Environments ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how incumbent firms learn from entrants through competitive interaction, which is a direct channel of knowledge diffusion across firms. Although it is not primarily about worker mobility or labor market frictions, its framework on learning, technology transfer, and strategic responses to entry speaks to how knowledge spreads and how firm behavior shapes diffusion. In this study, we examine the nature of Schumpeterian competition between entrants and incumbents. We argue that incumbents may respond to the threat of entry by either attacking the entrant or trying to learn from it, and that entrants, in turn, may react by either reciprocating the incumbent’s advances or retreating from it. Putting these competitive choices together, we develop a framework of four distinct potential scenarios of Schumpeterian competition. In particular, we emphasize a scenario we term creative divergence, wherein incumbents try to learn from entrants and build on their technologies, but their investments to do so cause entrants to retreat, resulting in diminishing...	Gianluigi Giustiziero, Aseem Kaul, Brian Wu
8	2015	Human capital, employment protection and growth in Europe ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how employment protection legislation affects technology adoption and growth across skill-intensive industries, which maps directly to labor market frictions shaping knowledge diffusion and productivity. While it does not focus on worker mobility or inventor flows per se, its emphasis on hiring and firing constraints as a barrier to adopting frontier technologies is highly relevant to the project’s broader question of how labor frictions influence diffusion and growth. Using data for a large sample of manufacturing and service sectors in 14 EU countries, this paper shows that the value added and TFP growth rate differential between high and low human capital intensive industries is greater in countries with low than countries with high levels of employment protection legislation. We also find that such negative effect of EPL is slightly stronger for countries near the technology frontier, in the manufacturing sector and after the 1990s. We interpret these results suggesting that technology adoption depends on the skill level of the workforce and on the capacity of firms to adjust employment as technology changes: therefore, firing costs have a stronger...	Maurizio Conti, Giovanni Sulis
8	2023	Proximity and Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from the Introduction of New Airline Routes ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how reduced travel-time frictions affect knowledge diffusion across firms and cities, with evidence that easier mobility facilitates tacit knowledge transfer and inventor flow. It is especially relevant to the project’s themes of worker mobility, knowledge spillovers, and labor-market frictions, though it focuses on airline-route proximity rather than non-competes or direct labor policy. This paper examines the causal relationship between proximity and knowledge diffusion by estimating the elasticity of core-based statistical area (CBSA) pair-level citations to variations in travel time induced by the introduction of new flight routes. The findings reveal that decreasing travel time between U.S. cities by 20% increases knowledge flow by 0.5%, which corresponds to an increase of over 15,000 citations at the aggregate level. Rather than boosting within-firm knowledge transfer, travel time reduction leads to a rise in knowledge spillovers primarily across firm boundaries, particularly among those that form joint ventures, have block holdings in each other, or form supply chain...	John Bai, Wang Jin, Sifan Zhou
8	2012	SPINOFFS AND THE MARKET FOR IDEAS* ↗ This paper is closely related because it models how worker-generated ideas move across firms through spinoffs and a market for ideas, directly addressing knowledge diffusion via labor mobility. It is especially relevant for understanding how information frictions and private knowledge shape the direction and quality of idea transfer, though it is more focused on firm entry and growth dynamics than on policy frictions like non-competes. We present a theory of entry through spinoffs where workers generate ideas and possess private information concerning their quality. Because quality is privately observed, adverse selection implies that the market can only offer a price that reflects the average quality of ideas sold. Only workers with good ideas decide to spin off, whereas workers with mediocre ideas sell them. Existing firms pay a price for ideas sold in the market that implies zero expected profits. Hence, firms’ project selection is independent of firm size, which can lead to scale‐independent growth. This mechanism results in invariant firm‐size distributions that resemble the data.	Satyajit Chatterjee, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg
8	2008	Efficient Search on the Job and the Business Cycle ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because on-the-job search is a core labor-market friction shaping worker mobility, job-to-job transitions, and the reallocation of skills across firms. While it is more macro-labor than directly about knowledge diffusion, efficient search on the job could strongly affect how quickly workers carrying tacit knowledge move between firms over the business cycle. No abstract available.	Guido Menzio, Shouyong Shi
8	2017	The Impact of Knowledge Worker Mobility through an Acquisition on Breakthrough Knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion through the movement and retention of skilled workers—specifically scientists—during acquisitions, which is a direct mechanism in the project. It also speaks to how firm-level retention decisions and knowledge characteristics shape breakthrough innovation, though it is focused on acquisitions rather than broader labor market frictions like non-competes or search. Abstract Acquisitions enable firms to access new knowledge from target firms, along with the scientists who created the knowledge, to enhance their own knowledge creation outcomes. We explore how the retention of target firm scientists and acquired knowledge characteristics affect new knowledge creation outcomes for the acquiring firms. Using a sample of 111,227 patents following 301 high‐tech acquisitions in 1990–2000, we find that acquiring firms that avoid the exodus of target firm scientists increase their likelihood of creating highly impactful knowledge. Moreover, the characteristics of acquired knowledge and organizational context of the acquiring firms moderate this relationship...	Haemin Dennis Park, Michael D. Howard, David Gomulya
8	2019	Learning by Seconding: Evidence from National Science Foundation Rotators ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker-based knowledge diffusion across organizations through secondments, which is central to understanding how mobility transmits ideas and practices between firms or institutions. Although it focuses on temporary rotations rather than labor-market frictions like non-competes, it provides direct evidence on how access to mobile skilled workers can raise peers’ research outcomes through knowledge transfer. We study knowledge flows between organizations through secondments, short-term employee assignments at an organization different from the home institution. Secondments allow the sending organization to capture knowledge and network resources from the receiving organization without an organization-level contract, alliance, or colocation, a process we term learning by seconding. We focus on the National Science Foundation (NSF) rotation program, under which the NSF employs academics, called rotators, on loan from their university, to lead peer reviews. We ask how rotators affect the behavior of their academic colleagues after returning from a secondment. Using difference in differences...	Christos Kolympiris, Sebastian Hoenen, Peter G. Klein
8	2005	Is Academic Science Driving a Surge in Industrial Innovation? Evidence from Patent Citations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge generated in academia diffuses into industrial innovation, which is central to the project’s concern with technology and knowledge spillovers. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides important evidence on one major channel of diffusion—patent citations to scientific research—especially in bioscience-related inventions. What is driving the remarkable increase over the last decade in the propensity of patents to cite academic science? Does this trend indicate that stronger knowledge spillovers from academia have helped power the surge in innovative activity in the U.S. in the 1990s? This paper seeks to shed light on these questions by using a common empirical framework to assess the relative importance of various alternative hypotheses in explaining the growth in patent citations to science. Our analysis supports the notion that the nature of U.S. inventive activity has changed over the sample period, with an increased emphasis on the use of the knowledge generated by university-based scientists in later...	Lee Branstetter, Yoshiaki Ogura
8	1981	Individual Effects in a Nonlinear Model: Explicit Treatment of Heterogeneity in the Empirical Job-Search Model ↗ [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it focuses on an empirical job-search model, which is directly connected to labor market frictions, worker mobility, and matching processes that shape knowledge diffusion. The emphasis on nonlinear modeling and explicit heterogeneity also suggests it may help explain differences in search behavior and mobility outcomes across workers, though the title does not indicate a direct focus on technology spillovers or innovation. No abstract available.	Nicholas M. Kiefer, George R. Neumann
8	2021	The Diffusion of New Technologies ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how new technologies diffuse across firms and labor markets, with a focus on geographic spread, skill composition of jobs, and the role of high-skilled labor pools and universities. It is highly relevant to the project’s themes of knowledge diffusion and worker mobility, though it does not primarily analyze labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. We identify novel technologies using textual analysis of patents, job postings, and earnings calls.Our approach enables us to identify and document the diffusion of 29 disruptive technologies across firms and labor markets in the U.S. Five stylized facts emerge from our data.First, the locations where technologies are developed that later disrupt businesses are geographically highly concentrated, even more so than overall patenting.Second, as the technologies mature and the number of new jobs related to them grows, they gradually spread geographically.While initial hiring is concentrated in high-skilled jobs, over time the mean skill level in new positions associated with the technologies...	Aakash Kalyani, Nicholas Bloom, Marcela Carvalho, et al.
8	2016	Inter-firm mobility and return migration patterns of skilled guest workers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inter-firm mobility of highly skilled workers and how visa-related frictions shape their movement across firms and countries, which is central to labor mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how policy constraints and macro conditions affect skilled-worker reallocation, though it focuses more on migration and employment outcomes than directly on technology spillovers or innovation outcomes. Critics of the H-1B program for high-skilled workers argue that the program restricts immigrant job mobility and lacks a vehicle for adjusting the number of visas during a recession. We study the job mobility of highly-skilled Indian IT guest workers and provide new evidence on their inter-firm mobility and return migration patterns. We use a unique multi-year firm level dataset to show that, outside of the Great Recession, these workers are mobile and that lower paid guest workers are more likely than higher paid guest workers to separate to another firm in the U.S. We also analyze return migration decisions and find that low wage workers repatriate more than high wage workers, and that...	Briggs Depew, Peter Norlander, Todd Sørensen
8	2003	Endogenous wage dispersion in a search-matching model ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a search-matching model with endogenous wage dispersion, job-worker flows, and on-the-job search, all of which are central to understanding worker mobility frictions. It is not directly about knowledge diffusion or non-compete policies, but the mechanisms it models can help explain how labor market frictions shape firm hiring, retention, and the movement of workers across firms. This paper presents a new model of endogenous wage and capital dispersion where heterogeneity is driven by entrepreneurial incentives to pay higher wages in order to attract and retain workers. The main contribution of this model is to provide a framework with microeconomic foundations that give rise to matching frictions, which can be used to understand the dynamic features of job-worker flows, wage dispersion and mobility as well as search on the job. The basic model is also extended to endogenise firms’ optimal investment in job-specific capital and search efforts undertaken by both employed and unemployed individuals. The empirical implications of this model are compared to those of the...	Michael Rosholm, Michael Svarer
8	2018	Idea Flows and Economic Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on how ideas diffuse through people and organizations, which is central to understanding knowledge spillovers and technology transfer in firms. Although it is a review rather than an empirical study of worker mobility or labor market frictions, its discussion of learning, firm dynamics, and idea diffusion is highly relevant background for the project. We review new theories of learning that posit specific, distinct roles for the learner or innovator and their intellectual environment. We consider applications to the dynamics of individual earnings over the life cycle, the diffusion of knowledge within an organization and firm dynamics, and the role of trade in the diffusion of ideas.	Francisco Buera, Robert E. Lucas
8	2021	Propagation and Amplification of Local Productivity Spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge and productivity spillovers propagate through firm networks, which is central to understanding diffusion mechanisms in the economy. Although it focuses on plant-level networks rather than worker mobility, its quantitative model of shared knowledge and aggregate consequences for productivity and regional disparities is highly relevant to the project’s themes. This paper shows that local productivity spillovers can propagate throughout the economy through the plant-level networks of multi-region firms. Using confidential Census plant-level data, we find that large manufacturing plant openings not only raise the productivity of local plants but also of distant plants hundreds of miles away, which belong to multi-region firms that are exposed to the local productivity spillover through one of their plants. To quantify the significance of plant-level networks for the propagation and amplification of local productivity shocks, we develop and estimate a quantitative spatial model in which plants of multi-region firms are linked through shared...	Xavier Giroud, Simone Lenzu, Quinn Maingi, et al.
8	2015	Job mobility, peer effects, and research productivity in economics ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies job mobility among researchers and how local peer environments affect research productivity, which speaks directly to knowledge diffusion through labor market movement. Its conclusion that spillovers may be globally available rather than tied to co-location is useful for understanding how mobility and communication technologies shape the transmission of ideas across workers and firms. We analyse a comprehensive panel dataset of economists working at Austrian, German, and Swiss universities and investigate how job mobility and characteristics of other researchers working at the same university affect research productivity. On aggregate, we find no influence of these local research characteristics on the productivity of researchers, if we control for their unobserved characteristics. This finding indicates that with today’s information, communication and travelling technologies knowledge spillovers are globally available rather than dependent on physical co-presence. However, we find some evidence that high-productivity researchers could be more likely to benefit from...	Thomas Bolli, Jörg Schläpfer
8	2022	Movers’ advantages: The effect of mobility on scientists’ productivity and collaboration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility affects knowledge production, collaboration, and research quality among scientists, which is central to understanding mobility as a channel for technology and knowledge diffusion. It is especially relevant for the project’s interest in the benefits and costs of movement frictions, though it focuses on scientist productivity rather than firm-level spillovers, non-competes, or aggregate productivity effects. With the rapid globalization of science, mobility is perceived as an important driver of scientific progress and innovation success. However, we have little knowledge about whether and how scientists' mobility influences their career development, especially scientists' productivity and collaboration. In this case study, using the data on 62,330 scientists, the Chinese computer scientists who published at least one computer science paper and published no fewer than 10 papers in total from 2000 to 2012, we apply difference in differences models in conjunction with PSM methods to show the effect of domestic mobility (i.e., moving inside China) on scientists' research quantity and quality by...	Meijun Liu, Xiao Hu
8	2017	Spatial Spillovers of Regional Innovation: Evidence from Chinese Provinces ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how innovation spills over across regions, which is directly relevant to knowledge diffusion and the spatial transmission of technology. However, it focuses on provincial innovation externalities and agglomeration rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention mechanisms. This article assesses whether and how the effects of spatial spillovers contribute to regional innovation growth in China. Using provincial-level data over the 2003–2011 period and employing a spatial Durbin model (SDM), the empirical results reveal strong spillover effects in both the input and output processes of regional innovation. An area can benefit from innovation in the surrounding areas through channels that include innovation output, R&D input, and agglomeration economies. By contrast, externalities from absorptive capacity are spatially localized, and foreign direct investment (FDI) can lead to negative spillover effects in this context. Moreover, different types of patented...	Huasheng Song, Min Zhang
8	2019	Occupational licensing and job mobility in the United States ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a labor market friction—occupational licensing—affects worker mobility, including job-to-job transitions and interstate movement, which are central mechanisms in knowledge diffusion through labor flows. While it does not directly analyze inventors, engineers, or technology transfer, its evidence on reduced mobility and possible productivity consequences is highly relevant to understanding how restrictions on worker movement can slow the reallocation of human capital and potentially dampen diffusion and growth. This paper studies the association between occupational licensing and job hire and job separation rates along with earnings of job stayers and job-to-job movers. In contrast to previous studies, it attempts to provide macro-level estimates by relying on a novel Job-to-Job Flows database from the U.S. Census Bureau, covering the near universe of job transitions. The empirical analysis exploits variation in licensing regulation across states and industries and constructs indicators for both the share of employment subject to licensing (the extensive margin) and the strictness of regulation (the intensive margin). Results show that more extensive and stricter licensing are both associated with...	Mikkel Hermansen
8	2013	Repeated job quits: stepping stones or learning about quality? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility and how information frictions shape the efficiency gains from job quits, which is central to understanding labor market frictions in knowledge diffusion. While it does not focus specifically on skilled-worker spillovers, inventor mobility, or technology transfer across firms, its analysis of ex ante versus ex post job quality is directly relevant to how mobility policies affect matching, retention, and the quality of worker movement. Increasing labor mobility is high on the political agenda because of its supposedly positive effects on labor market functioning. However, little attention has been paid to information imperfections, and to what extent they limit potential efficiency gains of labor mobility. When the quality of a new job offer is known ex ante, job quits serve as a stepping stone to better jobs. Yet, if job quality is only observed ex post, job quits may lead to worse matches. This paper argues that actual job quit behavior is characterized by a mixture of both, and investigates the relative empirical content of both extremes in quit decisions. A variance decomposition shows that for nearly 70% of job quits...	Anne C. Gielen
8	2018	Productivity spillovers through labor flows: productivity gap, multinational experience and industry relatedness ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies productivity spillovers through labor flows, which are a central mechanism in the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion across firms. It also explicitly examines how source-firm productivity, multinational experience, and industry relatedness shape spillovers, directly informing questions about the quality and direction of knowledge transfer through labor mobility. Labor flows are important channels for knowledge spillovers between firms; yet competing arguments provide different explanations for this mechanism. Firstly, productivity differences between the source and recipient firms have been found to drive these spillovers; secondly, previous evidence suggests that labor flows from multinational enterprises provide productivity gains for firms; and thirdly, industry relatedness across firms have been found important, because industry-specific skills have an impact on organizational learning and production. In this paper, we aim to disentangle the effects of productivity gap, multinational experience and industry relatedness in a common framework...	Zsolt Csáfordi, László Lőrincz, Balázs Lengyel, et al.
8	2021	Productivity Growth and Workers’ Job Transitions: Evidence from Censal Microdata ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility across firms reallocates labor toward more productive firms and how this contributes to aggregate productivity growth. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on skilled workers and knowledge diffusion, since it highlights that young, high-skilled job-to-job transitions account for most of the productivity gains from reallocation. A large body of work has highlighted the importance of employment reallocation as a driver of aggregate productivity growth, but there is little direct evidence on the extent of this process at the firm-worker level. We use an administrative matched employer-employee census for Chile to provide novel insights into the relationship between job transitions and productivity variation across firms, and to quantify the contribution of different worker groups to aggregate reallocation. As many theories would predict, worker flows from lower-to higher-productivity firms are larger than those of the opposite sign. Empirically, however, this is only marginally so. Almost half of all transitions...	Elías Albagli, Mario Canales, Chad Syverson, et al.
8	2016	Learning on the Job? Employee Mobility in the Asset Management Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee mobility as a mechanism for reallocating workers across firms and shows how on-the-job learning affects transitions, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through labor movement. Although it focuses on asset management rather than direct technology spillovers, its theory and evidence on experimentation, career switching, and startup formation are relevant to how mobility frictions shape worker sorting and innovation-related outcomes. We present a new mechanism by which prior employment can influence transitions to other firms. We propose that some employees divert effort toward unproductive activities to learn about their own fitness for alternative employment. Based on the results of this costly learning experience, or “experiment,” some employees will transition into other firms or launch their own ventures, whereas others will remain at the incumbent firm. We develop a theoretical model to explicate these propositions and test them using four data sets from the mutual fund and hedge fund industries. We find evidence that managers who engage in excessive risk taking at mutual funds are subsequently more likely to join...	Aaron Chatterji, Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Evan Rawley
8	2012	When Distance Disappears: Inventors, Education, and the Locus of Knowledge Spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors and how education affects the geographic reach of knowledge spillovers, which is directly relevant to mechanisms of technology diffusion across workers and firms. It speaks to how individual characteristics shape access to external knowledge and the breaking of geographic barriers, though it does not focus on labor market frictions like non-competes, mobility costs, or firm hiring/retention policies. This paper discusses the role of education in shaping the geographical breadth of knowledge spillovers. Data pertaining to 6,051 European inventions reveal that inventors with a high level of education, such as a university or doctoral degree, rely more on external spillovers regardless of the geographical location of their sources. Controlling for this effect, they also access geographically wider knowledge spillovers. This result holds after controlling for alternative explanations, such as the inventors' network and the site where the research is performed. By contributing to individual openness, education thus provides a means to break through geographical barriers to attain knowledge...	Paola Giuri, Myriam Mariani
8	2018	The Spawning of Ecosystems: How Cohort Effects Benefit New Ventures ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility from incumbent firms to new ventures as a channel for transferring knowledge, routines, and innovation capabilities. It also highlights how shared migration ties shape firm-to-firm relationships, knowledge overlap, and the quality of innovation, which fits the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Research has examined the process of “entrepreneurial migration,” whereby employees from successful industry incumbents move to new ventures. This phenomenon has been linked to direct benefits to entrepreneurial firms, offering valuable knowledge and routines obtained by employees during their tenure at incumbent firms. We propose a theoretical framework in which shared experience—a common background in beneficial knowledge management practices—creates a “cohort effect,” facilitating direct ties and innovation benefits to new ventures receiving inventors from the same incumbent firms. Analyzing longitudinal data on inventor migration to 658 new biotech ventures tracked from 1990 to 2013, we...	Michael D. Howard, Warren Boeker, Joel Andrus
8	2018	The empirical analysis of knowledge spillover effect measurement ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies knowledge spillovers and explicitly includes labor force mobility as a determinant of spillover intensity. It also considers R&D, market flexibility, and spatial frictions, which align well with the project’s interest in how labor mobility and related frictions affect technology diffusion and innovation. We analyzed the differences in knowledge spillover effect between industries by constructing an econometric model. In the model, we measured the relation degree and validity between influencing factors and their influence on knowledge spillover. The result indicates that there is a convergent pattern in the steady state of enterprise knowledge spillover and imitation structure, which formed the screw type advancement of innovation and imitation. Knowledge spillover is influenced by such factors as R&D, trade and traffic condition, labor force mobility, enterprise knowledge absorbency, market mechanism flexibility, time lag of knowledge spillover, and changes of factory site besides trade...	Xiaodi Xu, Zilong Wang, Bingyang Zhou, et al.
8	2022	Labor Market Fluidity and Human Capital Accumulation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how job-to-job mobility shapes human capital accumulation, wage growth, and aggregate productivity, which are central to understanding how labor market frictions affect knowledge diffusion and growth. While it is more about skill utilization and training than direct firm-to-firm technology transfer or inventor mobility, its framework on labor market fluidity and productivity losses is highly relevant to the project. Using panel data from 23 OECD countries, I document that wages grow more over the life-cycle in countries where job-to-job mobility is more common. A life-cycle theory of job shopping and accumulation of skills on the job highlights that a more fluid labor market allows workers to faster relocate to jobs where they can better use their skills, incentivizing accumulation of skills. Lower labor market fluidity reduces life-cycle wage growth by 20 percent and aggregate labor productivity by nine percent across the OECD relative to the US. I derive a set of testable predictions for training and confront them with comparable cross-country training data, finding support for the theory.	Niklas Engbom
8	2020	Quid Pro Quo, Knowledge Spillover, and Industrial Quality Upgrading: Evidence from the Chinese Auto Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers and technology diffusion through an important market-based channel, with worker flows explicitly identified as a mediator of spillover from foreign to domestic firms. It also quantifies how affiliation-driven learning improves product quality and profits, which connects directly to the project’s focus on the mechanisms and aggregate consequences of knowledge diffusion, though it does not center on labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. This paper studies the impact of FDI via quid pro quo (technology for market access) in facilitating knowledge spillover and quality upgrades. Our context is the Chinese automobile industry, where foreign automakers are required to set up joint ventures (the quid) with domestic automakers in return for market access (the quo). Our identification strategy exploits a unique dataset of detailed vehicle quality measures and relies on within-product variation across quality dimensions. We show that affiliated domestic automakers tend to adopt the quality strengths of their joint venture partners, consistent with learning and knowledge spillover. We rule out alternative explanations, such as...	Jie Bai, Panle Jia Barwick, Shengmao Cao, et al.
8	2013	Patents and Cumulative Innovation: Causal Evidence from the Courts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how legal restrictions on intellectual property shape the diffusion of knowledge and cumulative innovation, which is central to understanding technology spillovers. Although it focuses on patent rights and court invalidation rather than worker mobility, its emphasis on downstream innovation, bargaining frictions, and heterogeneous effects across firms is highly relevant to the project’s broader question of how institutional frictions affect knowledge transfer and growth. Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede follow-on innovation? We study the causal effect of removing patent rights by court invalidation on subsequent research related to the focal patent, as measured by later citations. We exploit random allocation of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to control for endogeneity of patent invalidation. Patent invalidation leads to a 50 percent increase in citations to the focal patent, on average, but the impact is heterogeneous and depends on characteristics of the bargaining environment. Patent rights block downstream innovation in computers, electronics and medical instruments...	Alberto Galasso, Mark Schankerman
8	2015	Foreign market experience, learning by hiring and firm export performance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility and hiring experienced employees transmit market-specific knowledge across firms, which is a clear channel of knowledge diffusion. Its focus is on export-market learning rather than technology spillovers or non-compete frictions, but it is highly relevant to how labor flows shape firm behavior and the spread of information. Export experience of managers and other top specialists is among the key drivers of export decisions in firms. We show evidence of this regularity based on employer-employee level data from the manufacturing industry in Estonia. We find that hiring managers and other high-wage employees with prior experience in exporting to a specific geographical region is associated with a higher probability of export entry to that region. Experience matters only if it is region specific and it is especially important for entry to neighbouring markets (the 1st markets of entry). However, there is less evidence of effects on export intensity. Notably, the relationship between export experience and a firm’s...	Jaan Masso, Kärt Rõigas, Priit Vahter
8	2023	The role of human capital: Evidence from corporate innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventors, firms, and how reduced labor mobility changes the relative contribution of workers versus firms to innovation outcomes. It speaks to the project’s core themes of human capital transfer, labor market frictions, and the impact of mobility restrictions on knowledge and innovation diffusion. This paper examines the distinct roles played by inventors and firms in contributing to corporate innovation. Inventors are six to eight times as important as firms in contributing to innovation performance as measured by patent and citation counts, but their importance is about the same in innovation strategies as captured by patent exploratory and exploitative scores. Furthermore, when labor mobility is reduced, the relative importance of firms to inventors in contributing to innovation strategy increases. Additional tests suggest that our main findings are unlikely driven by endogenous matching between firms and inventors.	Tong Liu, Yifei Mao, Xuan Tian
8	2015	Learning by hiring or hiring to avoid learning? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies learning-by-hiring as a mechanism for technology and knowledge diffusion across firms through inventor mobility in the biotechnology sector. It is especially relevant to the project’s interest in how firm-level hiring, internal social structures, and labor market frictions shape whether mobility actually transfers knowledge and raises innovative capacity. Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of the mechanisms associated with learning-by-hiring. Design/methodology/approach – The authors built a yearly dyad data structure of all of the hiring and sourcing firms in the US biotechnology sector between 1973 and 1999. Findings – The authors found that hiring firm’s learning from a prior employer’s knowledge is limited in scope to the knowledge developed by the newly hired inventor, and could be attributed to new hire direct involvement. Learning from new recruit occurred only when incumbent inventors collaborate intensively with the hired inventor. Accordingly, what might seem like learning-by-hiring may result in...	Daniel Tzabbar, Brian S. Silverman, Barak S. Aharonson
8	2025	The Diffusion of New Technologies ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how new technologies diffuse through labor demand and hiring across locations, directly connecting worker movement and skill-biased job dispersion to technology diffusion. It is especially useful for understanding the geographic spread of knowledge and the persistence of high-skill jobs in pioneering hubs, though it focuses more on hiring patterns than on frictions like non-competes or explicit inventor mobility. Abstract We identify phrases associated with novel technologies using textual analysis of patents, job postings, and earnings calls, enabling us to identify four stylized facts on the diffusion of jobs relating to new technologies. First, the development of economically impactful new technologies is geographically highly concentrated, more so even than overall patenting: 56% of the most economically impactful technologies come from just two U.S. locations, Silicon Valley and the Northeast Corridor. Second, as the technologies mature and the number of related jobs grows, hiring spreads geographically. This process is very slow, taking around 50 years to disperse fully. Third, while initial...	Aakash Kalyani, Nicholas Bloom, Marcela Carvalho, et al.
8	2015	The Limits of Lending: Banks and Technology Adoption Across Russia ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a financial friction—credit constraints—affects firms’ adoption of new technologies and the acquisition of external know-how, which is a key channel of knowledge diffusion. It is less central to worker mobility specifically, since the mechanism runs through banks, suppliers, and clients rather than labor market frictions or inventor movement. We exploit historical and contemporaneous variation in local credit markets across Russia to identify the impact of credit constraints on firm-level innovation. We find that access to bank credit helps firms to adopt existing products and production processes that are new to them. They introduce these technologies either with the help of suppliers and clients or by acquiring external know-how. We find no evidence that bank credit also stimulates firm innovation through in-house R&D. This suggests that banks can facilitate the discussion of technologies within developing countries but that their role in pushing the technological frontier is limited.	Çağatay Bircan, Ralph De Haas
8	2003	Knowledge Flows through Informal Contacts in Industrial Clusters Myths or Realities This paper is closely related because it studies how engineers transmit valuable knowledge across firms through informal contacts, which is a direct mechanism of worker-mediated technology diffusion. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on skilled-worker mobility and knowledge spillovers, though it emphasizes informal networks within a cluster rather than labor market frictions or policy. The role of informal networks in the development of regional clusters has received a lot of attention in the literature recently. Informal contact between employees in different firms is argued to be one of the main carriers of knowledge between firms in a cluster. This paper empirically examines the role of informal contacts in a specific cluster. In a recent questionnaire, we ask a sample of engineers in a regional cluster of wireless communication firms in Northern Denmark, a series of questions on informal networks. We analyze whether the engineers actually acquire valuable knowledge through these networks. We find that the engineers do share even valuable knowledge with informal...	Michael S. Dahl, Christian Ø. R. Pedersen
8	2017	Context Factors and the Performance of Mobile Individuals in Research Teams ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how internationally mobile वैज्ञानिक workers improve the innovation performance of research teams, directly linking worker mobility to knowledge recombination and spillovers. It is especially relevant for understanding when mobile individuals transmit knowledge more effectively across labs, though it focuses more on team performance conditions than on labor market frictions or policy effects like non-competes. Abstract We use survey data for 4336 scientific teams, located in 16 countries, where all members were working within a single lab, to test three context factors that potentially affect the capability of internationally mobile individuals to enhance the innovation performance of their research units. We formulate hypotheses on context factors rooted in the knowledge recombination and learning‐by hiring theories. The results show that three context factors are positively associated with international mobility and the performance of the research units: the degree to which knowledge in the relevant subfield of science is geographically concentrated, the creative intent of the activities...	Chiara Franzoni, Giuseppe Scellato, Paula E. Stephan
8	2014	The Impact of Local Knowledge on Banking ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how restrictions on the mobility of local knowledge affect firm entry, wages, and profitability, which maps directly onto the project’s interest in labor market frictions and knowledge diffusion. Although the setting is banking rather than inventors or engineers, the findings on reduced new firm formation, lower labor expenses, and incumbent rents are highly relevant to understanding how mobility constraints shape technology and knowledge transfer across firms. We use firm-level data to study how local knowledge impacts the wage and profitability of commercial banks. Using a novel regulatory and competitive environment as a natural experiment, we find that restrictions on the mobility of local knowledge negatively impact the incidence of new bank charters. Also consistent with expected theory, we also find no impact on banks formed through mergers or acquisition where the acquiring bank can simply purchase the local knowledge available. We also find that restrictions on the mobility of local knowledge decrease labor expenses. This supports the hypothesis that such mobility restrictions enable employers to extract rents from workers who lack...	Robert C. Bird, John D. Knopf
8	2016	Clans, Guilds, and Markets: Apprenticeship Institutions and Growth in the Pre-Industrial Economy ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how institutions shape person-to-person transmission of tacit knowledge, which is central to how worker mobility and matching affect technology diffusion. Although it focuses on apprenticeships, guilds, and pre-industrial growth rather than modern labor market frictions like non-competes or inventor mobility, its core mechanism is knowledge transfer through workers across organizational boundaries. In the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, Western Europe gradually pulled ahead of other world regions in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and income per capita. We argue that superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge help explain the European advantage. We build a model of technological progress in a preindustrial economy that emphasizes the person-to-person transmission of tacit knowledge. The young learn as apprentices from the old. Institutions such as the family, the clan, the guild, and the market organize who learns from whom. We argue that medieval European institutions such as guilds, and specific features...	David de la Croix, Matthias Doepke, Joel Mokyr
8	1999	Do Knowledge Spillovers Contribute to U.S. State Output and Growth? ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns knowledge spillovers and their contribution to output and growth, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and aggregate productivity. Although it does not explicitly mention worker mobility or labor market frictions, spillovers are often closely linked to those mechanisms, so the paper is likely to be useful for the project. No abstract available.	Pamela J. Smith
8	2019	Labour Market Frictions, Firm Growth, and International Trade ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies job-to-job mobility frictions, firm growth, and how worker movement affects aggregate outcomes in a dynamic model. Although it is not specifically about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its focus on labor market frictions shaping firm dynamics and the gains from reducing mobility barriers makes it highly relevant to the project. Abstract I study the aggregate effects of labour market frictions in a small open economy where firms grow slowly and make fixed export investments. The model features interactions between dynamic investments in exporting and search frictions with job-to-job mobility. A calibration to Argentina’s economy matching data on firm growth, worker transitions between firms, and export dynamics suggests that the real income gains from lowering frictions in job-to-job transitions are about seven times larger than comparable reductions in frictions from unemployment. Barriers to worker mobility across firms matter for the real income gains of trade-cost reductions.	Pablo Fajgelbaum
8	2011	Estimating the Wage Elasticity of Labour Supply to a Firm: What Evidence is there for Monopsony?* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies firm-level labor supply elasticity and explicitly interprets imperfect mobility and mobility costs as evidence of monopsony, which is central to understanding worker movement frictions. While it does not directly examine knowledge diffusion or technology spillovers, its framework helps explain how labor market frictions can affect hiring, retention, and potentially the transmission of skills across firms. In this article, we estimate the elasticity of the labour supply to a firm, using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Estimation of this elasticity is of particular interest not only in its own right but also because of its relevance to the debate about the competitiveness of labour markets. The essence of monopsonistically competitive labour markets is that labour supply to a firm is imperfectly elastic with respect to the wage rate. The intuition is that, where workers have heterogeneous preferences or face mobility costs, firms can offer lower wages without immediately losing their workforce. This is in contrast to the perfectly competitive...	Alison L. Booth, Pamela Katic
8	2016	Global Production Networks, Knowledge Diffusion and Local Capability Formation ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly links production networks with knowledge diffusion and the formation of local capabilities, which is closely related to how ideas and technology spread across firms and locations. While it does not explicitly mention worker mobility, non-competes, or labor market frictions, those mechanisms could plausibly be central channels in the paper’s analysis of diffusion and capability building. No abstract available.	Dieter Ernst, Linsu Kim
8	2011	Labour Mobility and Returns to Experience in Foreign Firms* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for transferring knowledge from foreign-owned firms to domestic firms, which is central to diffusion of technology across employers. Its focus on how highly educated workers capture returns to firm-specific experience and how that experience affects wages directly speaks to labor-market frictions, human capital transfer, and the incentives shaping knowledge diffusion. Abstract This paper uses Finnish linked employer–employee panel data to study whether employees are able to appropriate returns to knowledge accumulated in foreign‐owned firms when moving to domestic firms. The estimates indicate that highly educated employees earn a return to prior experience in a foreign‐owned firm, which is over and above the return to other previous experience. These employees do not appear to pay for the knowledge they accumulate in the form of lower starting wages in foreign‐owned firms.	Hanna Pesola
8	2016	Innovation vs. imitation and the evolution of productivity distributions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology spillovers, firm-level choices between innovation and imitation, and how these choices shape the productivity distribution over time. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it is directly relevant to the broader mechanism of knowledge diffusion and endogenous productivity dynamics across firms. We develop a tractable dynamic model of productivity growth and technology spillovers that is consistent with the emergence of real world empirical productivity distributions. Firms can improve productivity by engaging in in-house research and developmenmt (R&D) or, alternatively, by trying to imitate other firms' technologies, subject to the limits of their absorptive capacities. The outcome of both strategies is stochastic. The choice between in-house R&D and imitation is endogenous, and is based on firms' profit maximization motive. Firms closer to the technological frontier face fewer imitation opportunities, and choose in-house R&D, while firms farther from the frontier try to imitate...	Michael König, Jan Lorenz, Fabrizio Zilibotti
8	2021	When Subjective Judgments Lead to Spinouts: Employee Entrepreneurship Under Uncertainty, Firm-Specificity, and Appropriability ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee entrepreneurship and spinouts as a channel through which worker ideas move across firms, directly engaging with knowledge transfer via labor mobility. Its focus on uncertainty, firm-specific knowledge, and appropriability also connects to how frictions and institutions shape whether ideas are commercialized inside firms or carried out through worker movement, though it is less about broader economy-wide diffusion or productivity effects. We advance a theoretical framework of how entrepreneurial ideas of employees are commercialized as a function of their uncertainty, firm-specificity, and appropriability. We argue that as uncertainty increases, the choice of commercialization mode will increasingly be driven by differences in subjective judgments of the idea’s value, with firms having an advantage in assessing the true value of their employee’s ideas relative to market because of their firm-specific nature. Building on this insight, we develop a formal model of commercialization choice that maps idea characteristics to commercialization outcomes—spinouts, internal commercialization, market mobility, or abandonment—while...	Aseem Kaul, Martin Ganco, Joseph Raffiee
8	2023	Innovation on Wings: Nonstop Flights and Firm Innovation in the Global Context ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a mechanism for technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers across firms through improved worker-related connectivity, showing that better air links raise citations and collaborative patents. While it does not directly focus on labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs, it is highly relevant for understanding how reduced mobility barriers and interaction costs can affect innovation diffusion and firm-level knowledge transfer. We study whether, when, and how better connectivity through nonstop flights leads to positive innovation outcomes for firms in the global context. Using unique data of all flights emanating from 5,015 airports around the globe from 2005 to 2015 and exploiting a regression discontinuity framework, we report that a 10% increase in nonstop flights between two locations leads to a 3.4% increase in citations and a 1.4% increase in the production of collaborative patents between those locations. This effect is driven primarily by firms as opposed to academic institutions. We further study the characteristics of firms and firm locations that are salient to the relation between nonstop flights and...	Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Do Yoon Kim, et al.
8	2018	Labor Force Demographics and Corporate Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the composition of the labor force affects firm innovation, which is central to understanding how workers transmit knowledge and technology within firms and across locations. While it does not focus on mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs, it provides important evidence on the labor-force channel through which worker characteristics shape innovation and productivity. Firms in younger labor markets produce more innovation. We establish this by instrumenting the current labor force with historical births in each local labor market in the United States. Analyses of firms and inventors allow us to rule out unobservable heterogeneity across local labor markets and firms, life cycles, and other effects. Corporate innovation in younger labor markets reflects the innovative characteristics of younger labor forces, and its market value is higher. Younger workers as a group, not merely inventors by themselves, produce more innovation for firms through the labor force channel rather than through a financing or consumption channel.	François Derrien, Ambrus Kecskés, Phuong‐Anh Nguyen
8	2018	Business owners, employees, and firm performance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers through labor mobility, showing that prior employment in high-productivity firms predicts better outcomes for new firms. Its focus on how workers’ and owners’ employment histories shape productivity and survival speaks directly to diffusion of know-how across firms, though it is more about firm performance than labor market frictions or policy. The novel Finnish Longitudinal OWNer-Employer-Employee (FLOWN) database was used to analyze how the characteristics of owners and employees relate to firm performance as determined by labor productivity, survival, and employment growth. Focusing on the role of the employment history, the results show that previous experience in a high-productivity firm strongly predicts high productivity and probability of survival for the entrepreneur’s new firm. This can be interpreted as evidence of knowledge spillovers through labor mobility of both the owners and the employees. The results also show that the owner’s high education in a technical field is positively related to firm performance...	Mika Maliranta, Satu Nurmi
8	2019	Low-Wage Workers and the Enforceability of Non-Compete Agreements ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies non-compete enforcement, a central labor market friction in the project, and shows how restricting NCAs affects wages, mobility, and occupational outcomes. Although it focuses on low-wage workers rather than inventors or skilled engineers, the findings speak directly to how mobility constraints shape worker movement and the diffusion of knowledge through labor markets. We exploit the 2008 Oregon ban on non-compete agreements (NCAs) for hourly-paid workers to provide the first evidence on the impact of NCAs on low-wage workers. We find that banning NCAs for hourly workers increased hourly wages by 2-3% on average. Since only a subset of workers sign NCAs, scaling this estimate by the prevalence of NCA use in the hourly-paid population suggests that the effect on employees actually bound by NCAs may be as great as 14-21%, though the true effect is likely lower due to labor market spillovers onto those not bound by NCAs. While the positive wage effects are found across the age, education and wage distributions, they are stronger for female workers and in...	Michael Lipsitz, Evan Starr
8	2022	Cascading innovation: R&D team design and performance implications of mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interfirm mobility of engineers and scientists as a mechanism for innovation transfer and shows how hiring affects post-move innovation outcomes. It is especially relevant for understanding firm-level responses to worker mobility and how team design can amplify or dampen the diffusion of knowledge through mobile workers. Abstract Research Summary Given the high cost of external hiring and uncertainty related to performance benefits, how can organizations foster an environment that maximizes the post‐mobility performance of external hires and their collaborators? In this article, I posit that R&D team design is an important factor that could shape the post‐mobility performances of both groups. Building on the interfirm mobility, innovation, and teams literatures, I argue that technological knowledge diversity within teams and across teams could differently impact innovation performance. Analyzing 63,976 interfirm moves of engineers and scientists, I find that the post‐mobility performances of external hires...	Melody Chang
8	2017	The role of relative performance in inter-firm mobility of inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inter-firm inventor mobility, a core channel for knowledge diffusion and technology transfer in your project. It also examines how performance incentives and external collaborations shape mobility decisions, which is useful for understanding the micro-foundations of worker movement and knowledge spillovers. Prior research has emphasized the influence of inter-firm mobility on knowledge flows and innovation, yet we have an incomplete picture of the antecedents of inventor mobility. Building on theoretical traditions related to decision-making based on limited, asymmetric, bounded information, and economic and other incentives, our paper suggests that after controlling for individual performance and other variables previously shown to affect inter-organizational mobility, an inventor's performance relative to his co-patenting group alters his likelihood of mobility. Our analysis of 2648 inventors in the pharmaceutical industry shows that for those performing above their reference group (of past...	Francesco Di Lorenzo, Paul Almeida
8	2020	When do firms get ideas from hiring PhDs? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how hiring PhDs منتقل knowledge from universities into firms and how that affects innovation content, which is central to worker mobility as a diffusion mechanism. It also speaks to the quality and direction of knowledge transfer through hiring, though it is narrower than the core project because it focuses on PhD hires in one industry rather than broader labor market frictions or policy restrictions on mobility. Hiring new PhDs allows firms to access recent scientific advances. We develop new measures based on correlated topic models to estimate the similarity of patents and dissertations, and apply these measures to PhD-invented firm patents in the German laser industry. Patents are more exploratory for the firm if the underlying dissertation work is less similar to the firm's prior knowledge stock. Patents filed prior to dissertation submission are more exploratory. PhD-invented patents did not become less exploratory when Germany adopted university ownership in academic inventions.	Guido Buenstorf, Dominik P. Heinisch
8	2024	Standing on the shoulders of giants: Financial reporting comparability and knowledge accumulation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a firm-level information environment—financial statement comparability—affects interfirm knowledge diffusion and follow-on innovation, which is central to understanding technology spillovers across firms. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it directly addresses mechanisms that shape the rate and quality of knowledge transfer and innovation across firms. This study examines whether and how financial statement comparability facilitates the dissemination of innovative knowledge between firms and stimulates the creation of new knowledge. Using cross-patent citations to track interfirm knowledge transfers, we find that comparability increases firms' incentives to learn from peers and create new patents that cite their peers' existing patents. The investigation into the mechanism reveals that comparability improves firms’ ability to estimate the monetary value of peer knowledge and predict their own financial benefits from knowledge acquisition. The impact of comparability is more pronounced when peer knowledge is more publicly accessible or of...	Kevin Tseng, Rong Zhong
8	2010	Estimating the Employer Switching Costs and Wage Responses of Forward‐Looking Engineers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies engineer mobility, employer switching costs, and how wage offers shape movement across firms, which are central mechanisms in knowledge diffusion through labor markets. It is somewhat narrower than the core project because it focuses on mobility frictions and wage responsiveness rather than directly measuring technology spillovers, inventor knowledge transfer, or aggregate innovation effects. This article estimates worker switching costs and how much the employer switching of experienced engineers responds to outside wage offers. I use data on engineers across Swedish private sector firms to estimate the relative importance of employer wage policies and switching costs in a dynamic programming, discrete choice model of employer choice. The differentiated firms are modeled in employer characteristic space, and each firm has its own age‐wage profile. A majority of engineers have moderately high switching costs and a minority of experienced workers are responsive to outside wage offers. Younger workers are more sensitive to outside wage offers.	Jeremy T. Fox
8	2020	The Union Threat ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market frictions and firm hiring responses that affect firm composition, wages, and aggregate output, which are important for understanding how labor market institutions shape firm behavior and productivity. Although it is not directly about worker mobility or knowledge diffusion, the endogenous sorting of workers and the search-theoretic framework provide useful context for how labor market distortions can alter firm dynamics and economy-wide outcomes. Abstract This article develops a search theory of labour unions in which the possibility of unionization distorts the behaviour of non-union firms. In the model, unions arise endogenously through a majority election within firms. As union wages are set through a collective bargaining process, unionization compresses wages and lowers profits. To prevent unionization, non-union firms over-hire high-skill workers— who vote against the union— and under-hire low-skill workers— who vote in its favour. As a consequence of this distortion in hiring, firms that are threatened by unionization hire fewer workers, produce less and pay a more concentrated distribution of wages. In the calibrated...	Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel
8	2016	Spinoffs and clustering ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies spinoff formation, firm location, and innovation as a mechanism for regional clustering, which connects directly to how knowledge and technology diffuse through worker/founder movement. It is especially relevant to the project’s interest in mobility-driven spillovers and firm dynamics, though it focuses more on entrepreneurial spinoffs than on labor market frictions like non-competes or inventor mobility per se. Geographic clustering of innovative industries is associated with the entry and success of spinoff firms. We develop a model to explain the multiple empirical patterns regarding cluster growth and spinoff formation and performance, without relying on agglomeration externalities. Clustering naturally follows from spinoffs locating near their parents. In our model, firms grow and spinoffs form through the discovery of new submarkets based on innovation. Rapid and successful innovation creates more opportunities for spinoff entry and drives a region's growth. Our model provides baseline estimates of levels of agglomeration that can be attributed to this process of innovation and spinoff...	Russell Golman, Steven Klepper
8	2014	Cooperative R&D Networks Among Firms and Public Research Institutions ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because cooperative R&D networks are a classic channel for knowledge diffusion across organizations, which can overlap with worker mobility through shared projects, spillovers, and transfer of tacit know-how. It may focus more on inter-firm and public-institution collaboration than labor market frictions specifically, but it likely speaks to technology diffusion and innovation network effects central to the project. No abstract available.	Marco Marinucci
8	2016	The Lifecycle of Inventors ↗ [Title only] This title is likely highly relevant because inventors are central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion, and a lifecycle perspective often studies how inventors move across firms, industries, and stages of their careers. It may also speak to how inventor experience, retention, and mobility shape innovation outcomes, though the exact focus on frictions like non-competes or labor market policy is uncertain from the title alone. No abstract available.	Alex Bell, Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, et al.
8	2018	“Another roof, another proof”: the impact of mobility on individual productivity in science ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how mobility of highly skilled workers facilitates knowledge transfer and affects productivity, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a diffusion mechanism. Its main emphasis is on individual academic productivity and institutional quality rather than labor market frictions, non-competes, or aggregate innovation effects, so it is related but not a direct match. The mobility of highly skilled employees is seen as a critical way for organizations to transfer knowledge and to improve organizational performance. Yet, the relationship between mobility and individual performance is still largely a theoretical and empirical puzzle. Integrating human capital mobility research and the economics of science literature, we argue that mobility of academics should have a positive effect on individual productivity. Additionally, we argue that this positive effect is strengthened when academics move towards better-endowed institutions. We find support for our predictions using a unique dataset of 348 academics working in biology department in the United Kingdom...	Valentina Tartari, Francesco Di Lorenzo, Benjamin A. Campbell
8	2024	Monopsony Power in the Labor Market: From Theory to Policy ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on labor market frictions, search-and-matching, and noncompetition agreements, all of which are central to worker mobility and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. While it is not specifically about inventors or technology spillovers, its policy discussion on reducing barriers to job switching is directly relevant to understanding how mobility constraints shape wage setting, firm competition, and the transmission of skills. Labor markets are not perfectly competitive: Monopsony power enables employers to pay workers less than the marginal revenue product of labor. We review three theoretical frameworks explaining monopsony power. Oligopsony models attribute it to strategic interactions among a limited number of firms. Job differentiation models cite imperfect job substitution and heterogeneous worker preferences. Search-and-matching models point to search frictions hindering instantaneous access to all available jobs. We then develop a theory-informed discussion of the empirical evidence on antitrust policies, policies that reduce barriers to job switching, and policies countering monopsony's effects on...	José Azar, Ioana Marinescu
8	2021	Physician Practice Organization and Negotiated Prices: Evidence from State Law Changes ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how non-compete enforceability changes physician mobility and market structure, which in turn affects prices and firm organization. While it is in healthcare rather than technology diffusion, it directly informs how labor market frictions shape worker movement, concentration, and firm outcomes. We study the relationship between physician organizational structures and prices negotiated with private insurers. Using variation caused by state-level judicial law changes, we show that a 10 percent increase in the enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs) causes 4.3 percent higher physician prices, and declines in practice sizes and concentration. Using two databases containing every physician establishment and firm between 1996 and 2007, linked to negotiated prices, we show that larger practices have lower prices for services with high fixed costs, consistent with economies of scale. In contrast, increases in firm concentration conditional on establishment concentration leads to...	Naomi Hausman, Kurt Lavetti
8	2022	Spillover and Re-Spillover in China’s Collaborative Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor flow as a mechanism for innovation spillovers across regions, which is central to understanding how worker mobility diffuses knowledge. It is especially relevant for the project’s interest in how mobility of skilled workers affects the rate and direction of technology diffusion, though it is more regional and spatial-econometric than focused on firm-level frictions like non-competes or hiring policies. The spillover effect serves as the basis of regional collaborative innovation. Existing research on innovation spillover focuses on the overall impact of a region's innovation factors on local and other regions' innovation activities. However, re-spillover may occur since the flow of innovation factors between any two regions may influence the innovation in third-party regions. This study quantifies labor flow, capital flow, and institutional learning between regions in China using a gravity model and a social network analysis model, and then applies a spatial econometric model to investigate innovation spillover and re-spillover. The results show that re-spillover can better explain levels...	Song Wang, Jiexin Wang, Yixiao Wang, et al.
8	2014	An Empirical Model of Wage Dispersion with Sorting ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies an equilibrium on-the-job search model with labor market frictions, worker mobility, and sorting between workers and firms, all of which are central to how knowledge and productivity may diffuse through job moves. While it does not focus directly on technology spillovers, non-competes, or inventor mobility, its analysis of frictions, matching, and output losses from mismatch provides useful background for understanding how mobility shapes aggregate productivity and wage outcomes. This paper studies wage dispersion in an equilibrium on-the-job-search model with endogenous search intensity. Workers differ in their permanent skill level and firms differ with respect to productivity. Positive (negative) sorting results if the match production function is supermodular (submodular). The model is estimated on Danish matched employer-employee data. We find evidence of positive assortative matching. In the estimated equilibrium match distribution, the correlation between worker skill and firm productivity is 0.12. The assortative matching has a substantial impact on wage dispersion. We decompose wage variation into four sources: Worker heterogeneity, firm heterogeneity...	Jesper Bagger, Rasmus Lentz
8	2020	Technological Innovation and Labor Income Risk ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how technological innovation affects workers’ earnings risk through creative destruction, displacement, and human capital mismatch, which are central to understanding knowledge diffusion via labor mobility. It is especially relevant in showing that movers experience stronger left-tail effects and that competing-firm innovation worsens future earnings, though it focuses more on income risk than on the mechanisms or policy frictions behind worker mobility. Using administrative data from the United States, we document novel stylized facts regarding technological innovation and the riskiness of labor income. Higher rates of industry innovation are associated with significant increases in labor earnings for top workers. Decomposing this result, we find that own firm innovation is associated with a modest increase in the mean, but also variance, of worker earnings growth. Innovation by competing firms is related to lower, and more negatively skewed, future earnings. We construct a structural model featuring creative destruction and displacement of human capital that replicates these patterns. In the model, higher rates of innovation by competing...	Leonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Lawrence Schmidt, et al.
8	2023	Trade and diffusion of embodied technology: an empirical analysis ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through imported inputs, showing how embodied knowledge flows across sectors and countries and affects downstream patenting activity. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it speaks to the broader mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and innovation spillovers that are central to the project. • We construct a novel dataset on global innovations using Google Patents Public Data. • There are key differences between patent-citation and production input-output tables. • Higher knowledge-weighted imports from the US increase downstream patenting activity. • Knowledge-weighted imports from the US explain 13% of residual patent variation. Using global patents, citations, inter-sectoral sales, and trade data, we examine the international diffusion of technology through imported inputs. We use citations and sales data to characterize knowledge and production input-output tables for individual countries. Using these tables, we construct a measure of the flow of knowledge-weighted and...	Stephen Ayerst, Faisal Ibrahim, Gaelan MacKenzie, et al.
8	2014	How much is a green card worth? Evidence from Mexican men who marry women born in the U.S. ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how immigration status and mobility restrictions affect workers’ wages, directly echoing the project’s focus on labor market frictions and movement constraints. While it is not about firm-to-firm knowledge diffusion or innovation spillovers per se, the estimated earnings effects of relaxing mobility restrictions provide important evidence on how reduced worker mobility can affect labor market outcomes and potentially the transmission of skills. Many countries impose restrictions on some immigrants' job mobility, likely reducing their wages. We quantify such effects for Mexican-born men in the U.S. by recognizing that immigrants who marry U.S. natives receive expedited "green cards" (Permanent Residency). Robust IV estimates indicate that intermarried Mexicans earn a 40 percent wage premium, and larger for the most mobile subgroups. Analogous premiums are statistically insignificant for men from Puerto Rico, who acquire no new rights because they are already U.S. citizens. Attributing the approximately 30 percent difference to green cards, we estimate that eliminating wait times would increase Mexicans' mean earnings...	Miao Chi, Scott Drewianka
8	2006	Directed Search for Equilibrium Wage-Tenure Contracts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, job-to-job mobility, and equilibrium wage-tenure contracts, all of which are central to understanding how worker movement shapes labor market dynamics. While it does not focus on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility directly, its directed search framework and mobility frictions are highly relevant for modeling how labor market structure affects worker reallocation and the transmission of productivity-relevant matches. I analyze the equilibrium in a labor market where firms offer wage-tenure contracts to direct the search of employed and unemployed workers. All workers are identical, every applicant observes all offers, and there is no coordination among individuals. I formulate the equilibrium with directed search and show that it exists. In common with undirected search, wages increase and quit rates decrease with tenure. Moreover, on-the-job search and wage-tenure contracts produce a continuous wage distribution among homogeneous workers. In contrast to undirected search, the applicants choose their targets optimally and separate themselves according to the values of their current contracts. Such...	Shouyong Shi
8	2012	Skilled labour mobility, networks and knowledge creation in regions: a panel data approach ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies skilled labour mobility of inventors and how their movement affects regional patenting and knowledge creation, which is central to technology diffusion through worker flows. It also considers collaborative and cross-regional research networks, making it relevant for understanding how mobility and connectivity shape innovation outcomes, though it is more about regional patent production than labor market frictions or policy. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relative contribution of different features of the local labour market for inventors on regional patenting. By means of a knowledge production function and a sample of 276 European regions, we assess whether local labour mobility of inventors, as well as the scale and extent of their collaborative research networks, correlates with innovation outcomes. In the second part of the paper, we extend the analysis to the role of spatial mobility of knowledge workers and cross-regional research networks as predictors of regional patenting. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
8	2023	Fencing off Silicon Valley: Cross-border venture capital and technology spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies cross-border venture capital as a channel for technology spillovers, directly touching the diffusion of knowledge across firms and countries. While it is not primarily about worker mobility or labor market frictions, it speaks to the broader mechanism of how firms transmit know-how and how policy can affect the direction and extent of spillovers. The treatment of foreign investors has been a contentious topic in U.S. entrepreneurship policy in recent years. This paper examines foreign corporate investments in Silicon Valley from a theoretical and empirical perspective. We model a setting where such funding may allow U.S. entrepreneurs to pursue technologies that they could not otherwise, but may also lead to spillovers to the overseas firm providing the financing and the nation where it is based. We show that despite the benefits from such inbound investments for U.S. firms, it may be optimal for the U.S. government to raise their costs to deter investments. Using as comprehensive as possible a sample of investments by non-U.S...	Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates, Josh Lerner, et al.
8	2019	Public and Private Employer Learning: Evidence from the Adoption of Teacher Value Added ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how asymmetric employer information changes worker mobility and sorting, which is central to understanding frictions in labor markets and the diffusion of valuable human capital across firms. Although the setting is teachers rather than inventors or engineers, the mechanism—information shocks affecting retention, poaching, and mobility outcomes—maps well onto the project’s interest in how labor market frictions shape knowledge transfer and aggregate outcomes. Informational asymmetries between employers may inhibit optimal worker mobility. However, researchers rarely observe shocks to employers’ information. I exploit two school districts’ adoptions of value-added (VA) measures of teacher effectiveness—informational shocks to some, but not all, employers—to provide direct tests of asymmetric employer learning. I develop a learning model and test its predictions for teacher mobility. I find that adopting VA increases within-district mobility of high-VA teachers, while low-VA teachers move out of district to uninformed principals. These patterns are consistent with asymmetric employer learning. This sorting from widespread VA adoption exacerbates...	Michael D. Bates
8	2020	US Permanent Residency, Job Mobility, and Earnings ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how immigration-related labor market frictions constrain skilled worker mobility and thereby affect firm monopsony power and earnings. It speaks directly to the project’s interest in how reduced mobility limits the diffusion of human capital and knowledge through worker movement, though it is more about labor market outcomes than measured technology spillovers. One concern regarding US immigration policies is that skilled workers on temporary visas may be bound to their employers in “indentured servitude,” giving rise to monopsony power. I investigate this concern by estimating the effect of acquiring permanent residency on the job mobility and earnings of these workers. Using fixed effects models, I find an immediate upsurge in mobility upon permanent residency receipt, primarily driven by voluntary moving being depressed during the employer-sponsored immigration process. Job lock reduces the earnings of male workers by 4.7%, which translates to a 2% surplus for firms after extra hiring costs are subtracted.	Xuening Wang
8	2011	Does Distance Matter Less Now? The Changing Role of Geography in Biotechnology Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the geography of knowledge spillovers in biotechnology, a core channel through which worker and inventor mobility can transmit ideas across firms and locations. While it does not directly examine labor market frictions or mobility policies like non-competes, its focus on how distance shapes the diffusion of innovation makes it highly relevant to understanding the spatial dimension of knowledge transfer. Using patent citation data for the U. S., we test whether knowledge spillovers in biotechnology are sensitive to distance, and whether that sensitivity has changed over time. Controlling for self-citation by inventor, assignee, and examiner, cohort-based regression analysis shows that physical distance is becoming less important for spillovers with time. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.	Daniel K. N. Johnson, Kristina M.L. Acri née Lybecker
8	2022	Boundary spanning through external technology acquisition: The moderating role of star scientists and upstream alliances ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion within firms through the acquisition of external technologies, which is a direct mechanism of knowledge transfer relevant to spillovers and innovation. Although it focuses more on firm-level knowledge recombination than on worker mobility or labor market frictions, the role of star scientists in moderating post-acquisition development makes it useful for understanding how skilled labor interacts with technology diffusion. Building on the theories of knowledge recombination, we argue that the external acquisition of technologies acts as a boundary spanning mechanism that impacts on the recipient firm’ subsequent technology development. The effect is moderated by two additional mechanisms, namely the retention of star scientists and the experience in upstream strategic alliances. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 6208 USPTO patented technologies acquired by 350 biotechnology firms over the period 1980–2012. Findings reveal an inverted U-shaped effect of the pioneering nature of the acquired technology on firm's subsequent developments, in terms of (self) citations of firm's subsequent patents to the...	Maria Isabella Leone, Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli, Angelo Natalicchio
8	2018	How Do Prior Ties Affect Learning by Hiring? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how hiring mobile R&D scientists transfers knowledge across firms and how pre-existing ties shape the extent and type of learning that occurs after mobility. It speaks directly to worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion, though it focuses more on collaboration ties and learning outcomes than on labor market frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. Research has shown that hiring R&D scientists from competitors fosters organizational learning. We examine whether hiring scientists who have many collaborative ties with the hiring firm prior to the mobility event produces different learning outcomes than hiring scientists who have few or no such ties. We theorize that prior ties reduce explorative learning and increase exploitative learning. Namely, we posit that prior ties lead the hiring firm to focus on that part of a new hire’s knowledge with which they are already familiar and that they help appropriate the new hire’s newly generated knowledge. At the same time, prior ties induce new hires to search locally within the hiring firm’s...	Vivek Tandon, Gökhan Ertug, Gianluca Carnabuci
8	2019	Global spatial economic interaction: knowledge spillover or technical diffusion? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge spillovers and technical diffusion drive economic interaction, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and productivity growth. Its emphasis on spatial barriers and factor mobility restrictions, including institutional impediments in China, connects well to the project’s focus on frictions that limit worker movement and knowledge transmission. Two sources of economic interaction are knowledge spillover and technical diffusion. This paper proposes a structural model with spatial effect in knowledge spillover and technical diffusion and empirically estimates the sources of economic interaction. The empirical results demonstrate that economic interaction mainly comes from knowledge spillover, and the effect of technical diffusion is weak. These results appeal for special attention to be paid to enhancing the effect of technical diffusion on long-term economic growth. Moreover, the knowledge spillover effect within China is only slightly larger than that in the global setting, implying existence of barriers, particularly...	Xun Zhang, Guanghua Wan, Jing Li, et al.
8	2024	Migration and Innovation: Learning from Patent and Inventor Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on migrant inventors as a channel for international knowledge transfer and innovation diffusion, which is central to the project’s interest in worker mobility as a mechanism for spreading technology. It also connects to labor-market frictions and firm-level impacts by discussing how migration can ease skill shortages and increase variety in inventive teams and firms, though it is more about framing and measurement than direct policy analysis. Research on international migration and innovation relies heavily on inventor and patent data, with “migrant inventors” attracting a great deal of attention, especially for what concerns their role in easing the international transfer of knowledge. This hides the fact that many of them move to their host country before starting their inventive career or even before completing their education. We discuss the conceptual and practical difficulties that stand in the way of investigating other likely channels of influence of inventor’s migration on innovation, namely the easing of skill shortages and the increase of variety in inventive teams, firms, and location.	Francesco Lissoni, Ernest Miguélez
8	2022	Entrepreneurial Spillovers from Corporate R&D ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how corporate R&D affects employee mobility and the diffusion of ideas, skills, and technologies into new ventures. Its evidence on workers leaving to found high-tech, VC-backed startups directly speaks to knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurial channels of diffusion, and the consequences of firm R&D for innovation outside the incumbent firm. This paper offers the first study of how changes in corporate R&D investment affect labor mobility. We show that increases in R&D spur employee departures to join start-ups’ founding teams. This appears to reflect employees taking the ideas, skills, or technologies created through the R&D process but not especially valuable to the R&D-investing firm to start-ups. The employee-founded start-ups tend to be outside the R&D-investing employer’s industry, suggesting that the underlying ideas would impose diversification costs on the R&D-investing firm. The start-ups are more likely to be VC backed, high tech, and high wage, pointing to substantial spillover benefits.	Tania Babina, Sabrina T Howell
8	2021	Innovation by start-up firms: The role of the board of directors for knowledge spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers into start-ups and explicitly compares board connections with spillovers through worker and managerial mobility. While the main channel is board interlocks rather than labor mobility itself, the paper is highly relevant for understanding how knowledge diffuses across firms and how alternative channels complement or substitute for worker movement. This paper investigates whether board directors interlocked with or employed by innovative firms affect start-up firms’ propensity to be innovators themselves. Drawing upon a sample of more than 50,000 Swedish start-up firms, we find that board connections to incumbent innovators have a causal impact on the new firms’ probability to apply for patents. The results are robust when controlling for industry, geography, firm age, as well as spillovers through worker and managerial mobility, external knowledge sourcing through patent disclosure, access to venture capital and board attributes.	Christopher F. Baum, Hans Lööf, Andreas Stephan, et al.
8	2020	Measuring Employer-to-Employer Reallocation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employer-to-employer worker mobility, which is a central mechanism in the project’s focus on knowledge diffusion through labor reallocation. While it does not directly analyze technology transfer, inventors, or non-compete restrictions, its measurement of EE transitions provides important empirical foundations for studying how worker movement shapes competition, reallocation, and potentially spillovers across firms. We revisit measurement of Employer-to-Employer (EE) transitions, the main engine of labor market competition and employment reallocation, in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS). We follow We detect a sudden and sharp increase in the incidence of missing answers to this question starting in 2007, when the U.S. Census Bureau introduced a change in survey methodology, the Respondent Identification Policy (RIP). We show evidence of selection into answering the EE question by both observable and unobservable worker characteristics that correlate with EE mobility. We propose a selection model and a procedure to impute missing answers to the key survey question, thus EE transitions, after...	Shigeru Fujita, Giuseppe Moscarini, Fabien Postel‐Vinay
8	2009	Measuring Knowledge Spillovers: What Patents, Licenses and Publications Reveal About Innovation Diffusion ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns knowledge spillovers and innovation diffusion, which are central to how ideas move across firms and workers. Even though it emphasizes patents, licenses, and publications rather than worker mobility specifically, these are key channels through which human capital and technology transfer can be measured and studied. No abstract available.	Andrew J. Nelson
8	2022	Collaborative structure and post‐mobility knowledge spillovers: A dyadic approach ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee mobility as a channel for post-move knowledge spillovers between firms, directly matching the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses technology and know-how. Its main contribution is about how firms’ collaborative structures shape spill-ins and spill-backs after hiring, which is highly relevant for understanding firm-level incentives, knowledge transfer, and the effects of mobility on diffusion quality. Abstract Research Summary How does the dyadic collaborative structure between the hiring firm and the losing firm influence knowledge spillovers following an employee's move? We demonstrate that knowledge spill‐ins (to the hiring firm) and spill‐backs (to the losing firm) are the greatest when a firm with a strong collaborative density hires an employee from another firm that too has a strong collaborative density. Furthermore, such a dyadic combination results in the greatest degree of access to the broader knowledge of the other firm. By considering the role of relative collaborative structures in post‐mobility knowledge‐building activities, we inform the extant literature on the...	Daniel Tzabbar, Jeongsik Jay Lee, Donghwi Seo
8	2020	Employer–Employee Matching and Complementary Assets: The Role of Cross-Organization Collaborations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel through which prior collaboration and relational capital improve employer-employee matching and post-move performance. Although it focuses on academic scientists rather than diffusion of technology across firms, it speaks directly to how knowledge-relevant ties shape hiring, movement, and the productivity effects of mobility. Building on human capital theory and social capital theory, we theorize that cross-organization collaborations generate a rich and distinct source of relational capital that enhances employer–employee matches when complementary assets are important in the production process. We test our theory in the context of academic scientists where collaborations within and across organizations are common channels to access complementary assets. We find that cross-organizational collaborations are positively related to an individual’s decision to move to a previous coauthor’s organization. Additionally, moving to an organization where an individual had a direct collaboration is positively related to...	Benjamin A. Campbell, Francesco Di Lorenzo, Valentina Tartari
8	2011	Growth and the diffusion of ideas ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how ideas diffuse through copying/imitation and how the rate of diffusion affects aggregate growth, which maps directly onto the project’s interest in knowledge spillovers and endogenous growth. However, it is a stylized macro model of idea diffusion rather than a worker-mobility or labor-market-frictions paper, so it is more useful as theoretical background than as direct evidence on mobility, non-competes, or firm hiring/retention decisions. In a recent model of growth developed by Lucas (Lucas, R., 2009. Ideas and growth. Economica 76, 1-19), a continuum of people interact in a random manner and copy each other's productive ideas when it is economically beneficial to do so. This paper extends the Lucas model by assuming that each person's productivity also experiences random shocks due to individual discovery. A nonlinear partial differential equation is derived for the distribution of income, which admits a traveling wave solution representing a growing economy. The growth rate is an increasing function of the rate of imitation. The growth rate is also an increasing but concave function of population size and reaches a...	Mark Staley
8	2024	How Does Labor Mobility Affect Corporate Leverage and Investment? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor mobility changes firm behavior through skill-specific worker movement, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion and firm dynamics. While the focus is on leverage and investment rather than technology transfer per se, its model and evidence on mobility shocks, high-skill firms, and policy-relevant labor frictions make it highly relevant to the project. Abstract I develop a dynamic model to investigate how labor mobility impacts firms’ decisions. In the model, firms make investment and financing decisions, hire labor with different skill and mobility levels, and set wages through bargaining. The model predicts that, in response to an increase in labor mobility, high-skill firms operate with lower financial leverage, become less responsive to investment opportunities, and invest at lower rates, while low-skill firms remain unaffected. I confirm these predictions in the data using shocks to workers’ mobility across firms. The results are useful in understanding the effects of labor mobility changes driven by government policies or...	Ali Sanati
8	2012	The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inflows of high-skill workers affect incumbent workers’ productivity, mobility, and the distribution of innovation output across institutions. It is especially relevant to the project’s themes of worker mobility, knowledge diffusion, and the effects of labor market frictions on aggregate productivity, even though the setting is mathematicians rather than firms or inventors in the usual labor-market context. It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large, post-1992 influx of Soviet mathematicians on the productivity of their U.S. counterparts. We find a negative productivity effect on those mathematicians whose research overlapped with that of the Soviets. We also document an increased mobility rate (to lower quality institutions and out of active publishing) and a reduced likelihood of producing ‘‘home run’’ papers. Although the total product of the preexisting American mathematicians shrank, the Soviet contribution to American...	George J. Borjas, Kirk Doran
8	2011	Commitment, advertising and efficiency of two-sided investment in competitive search equilibrium ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor-market frictions, competitive search, and how advertising/commitment affect workers’ and firms’ investment incentives in a model of job matching. Its focus on human capital investment, wage commitment, and efficiency in market design connects directly to how frictions shape worker mobility and knowledge-related investment, though it does not specifically analyze inventor mobility or technology diffusion across firms. Competitive search entails both commitment to and advertising of pay-off relevant aspects of market participants. This paper considers incrementally the implications of each in a labor market where both workers and firms invest prior to market entry. A wide range of institutional arrangements are addressed within the same general framework. When the characteristics of jobs or workers are advertised the efficient outcome pertains. Commitment without advertising typically leads to market unravelling: the Diamond paradox. But, whenever wages and human capital are advertised, firms become residual claimants; the private and social returns to investment coincide. Absent wage commitment, the...	Adrian Masters
8	2022	Patents and knowledge diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies a mechanism of knowledge diffusion, showing that broader access to patented information increases citations from U.S. inventors. It is not centered on worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it provides useful evidence on how information frictions affect the spread of technological knowledge across firms and inventors. One of the main rationales for the existence of the patent system is to encourage knowledge diffusion through the full disclosure of the technical knowledge embodied in a patented invention. Yet, economists and legal scholars cast doubts on the validity of the disclosure theory. The empirical evidence on the actual benefits of the disclosure function remains limited. The present paper aims to expand our understanding of how information spreads via patent disclosure and exploits recent improvements in machine translation (MT) to identify the effect of broader access to patented knowledge. More specifically, the paper uses a unique natural experiment. In September 2013, Google launched a...	Benjamin Büttner, Murat Fırat, Emilio Raiteri
8	2017	How Does Human Capital Matter? Evidence from Venture Capital ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how restrictions on labor mobility affect VC investment and innovation, directly linking labor market frictions to knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship. It also speaks to the project’s themes of human capital, mobility constraints, and firm responses such as staging and syndication, though it focuses more on venture capital financing than on worker-to-worker or inventor spillovers across firms. Abstract We examine the effect of labor mobility on venture capital (VC) investment. Following the staggered adoption of the inevitable disclosure doctrine that restricts labor mobility, VCs are less likely to invest in affected states. This effect is more pronounced when human capital is more important to startups, when VC investment is more uncertain, and when VCs’ monitoring costs are higher. The reduced innovation productivity of employees is a plausible underlying mechanism. To mitigate this adverse effect, VCs stage finance startups more and syndicate more with other VCs. Our paper sheds new light on the real effects of labor market frictions.	Lifeng Gu, Ruidi Huang, Yifei Mao, et al.
8	2005	Exploring the Link Between Academic Science and Industrial Innovation This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge from academic science spills over into industrial innovation through patent citations, which is central to diffusion of technology and knowledge. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides important evidence on the channels and quality of knowledge transfer between science and firms. Over the last fifteen years, patent citations to scientific articles have increased rapidly. Is this indicative of increasingly powerful knowledge spillovers from academic science to industrial innovation? This paper seeks to shed light on that question by conducting statistical analysis of the universe of patent citations to scientific research papers found in a random sample of nearly 30,000 U.S. patents issued between 1983 and 1996. I find evidence that the propensity of patents to cite academic science has risen sharply, even controlling for changes in the volume and distribution across fields of U.S. patents. I also find that patent citations to science are concentrated in a narrow set...	Lee Branstetter
8	2011	Innovation and Growth with Financial, and other, Frictions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies endogenous growth driven by knowledge creation and technology transfer under frictions in the exchange of ideas, which is central to understanding how diffusion of knowledge affects productivity. However, it focuses more on markets for ideas, financial frictions, and intermediation than on worker mobility, hiring, or non-compete-related labor market frictions specifically. The generation and implementation of ideas, or knowledge, is crucial for economic performance. We study this process in a model of endogenous growth with frictions. Productivity increases with knowledge, which advances via innovation, and with the exchange of ideas from those who generate them to those best able to implement them (technology transfer). But frictions in this market, including search, bargaining, and commitment problems, impede exchange and thus slow growth. We characterize optimal policies to subsidize research and trade in ideas, given both knowledge and search externalities. We discuss the roles of liquidity and financial institutions, and show two ways in which...	Jonathan Chiu, Césaire Meh, Randall Wright
8	2012	Innovation vs. Imitation and the Evolution of Productivity Distributions This paper is closely related because it studies technology spillovers, firm-to-firm imitation, and endogenous innovation choices that shape productivity dispersion and growth. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its mechanisms for knowledge diffusion and persistent productivity differences are highly relevant to understanding how technology spreads across firms. We develop a tractable dynamic model of productivity growth and technology spillovers that is consistent with the emergence of real world empirical productivity distributions. Firms can improve productivity by engaging in in-house R&D, or alternatively, by trying to imitate other firms’ technologies subject to limits to their absorptive capacities. The outcome of both strategies is stochastic. The choice between in-house R&D and imitation is endogenous, and based on firms’ profit maximization motive. Firms closer to the technological frontier have less imitation opportunities, and tend to choose more often in-house R&D, consistent with the empirical evidence. The equilibrium choice leads to...	Michael E. D. Koenig, Jan Lorenz, Fabrizio Zilibotti
8	2017	Do Higher Wages Reduce Knowledge Worker's Job Mobility? Evidence for Swedish Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor job mobility, a central mechanism in the diffusion of knowledge and technology across firms. It also speaks to how firm compensation affects retention and mobility incentives, showing how wages interact with signaling and outside options in shaping the movement of highly skilled workers. Abstract Based on linked employer‐employee panel data on all Swedish inventors, this paper analyses how wages affect inventors’ job mobility. It is commonly assumed that higher wages reduce mobility because they reduce the value of outside opportunities. We argue that higher wages also send performance signals to potential employers, who raise their wage offers in response. By disentangling the effects of higher wages, we show evidence of a utility and an opportunity cost effect, which reduce mobility, and a performance‐signalling effect, which increases mobility. In our data, the effects cancel each other out, with no effects of wages on mobility rates on average. We find, however, that...	Olof Ejermo, Torben Schubert
8	2021	Skilled immigrants and technology adoption: Evidence from the German settlements in the Russian empire ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how skilled migrant communities transmit technology and knowledge across groups, which is central to understanding diffusion mechanisms in your project. It also highlights an important limit: immigrants can spur adoption of tools and raise productivity while communication barriers prevent broader skill transfer into higher-skill occupations. Abstract This paper examines knowledge spillovers across ethnic boundaries. Using the case of skilled German immigrants in the Russian Empire, we study technology adoption among Russian peasants. We find that distance to German settlements predicts the prevalence of heavy iron ploughs, fanning mills and wheat sowing among Russians, who traditionally ploughed with a light wooden ard and sowed rye. The main channel of technology adoption was German fairs. We show that heavy ploughs increased the labor productivity of Russian peasants. However, communication barriers precluded Russians from adopting skill-intensive occupations like blacksmithing, mechanics, carpentry, and other crafts. The...	Timur Natkhov, Natalia Vasilenok
8	2024	Access to Financial Disclosure and Knowledge Spillover ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillover and how firms strategically manage access to innovation outputs through disclosure choices, patents, and trade secrecy. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it is highly relevant for understanding the protection and diffusion of knowledge across firms. ABSTRACT Access to firms’ innovation outputs determines the extent of knowledge spillover that poses risk to innovation appropriability. We provide plausibly causal evidence that processing costs of financial disclosures, which inform users of the economic value of innovation, play a key role in firms’ management of knowledge spillover. We exploit an exogenous, randomly assigned, and staggered policy shock by the SEC that reduces processing costs of mandatory financial disclosures. In response, firms reduce patenting rates, with the effect concentrated among firms in more competitive industries and with lower costs of capital. Firms also reduce their patent disclosure quality. Our results...	Yen‐Cheng Chang, Kevin Tseng, Tzu-Wen Yu
8	2022	Network effects and research collaborations: evidence from IMF Working Paper co-authorship ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how network structure and matching frictions shape the formation of research collaborations, which is a key channel for knowledge diffusion. Although it focuses on co-authorship rather than worker mobility or labor-market policies, its evidence on reduced matching frictions, proximity effects, and collaboration incentives speaks directly to mechanisms governing the spread of ideas across researchers and firms. An important trend in knowledge generation and diffusion is that the co-authorship of research publications has become remarkably more frequent. In this paper we study the role of co-authorship networks for starting and maintaining research collaborations. Relying on the network of the IMF’s Working Papers—which reflects well the endogenous nature of research collaborations—we document the presence of many authors with few direct co-authors, yet indirectly connected through short co-authorship chains. Two researchers are more likely to team up if their distance in the existing network is shorter, arguably reflecting reduced matching frictions. In addition, productive authors and authors...	Dennis Essers, Francesco Grigoli, Evgenia Pugacheva
8	2012	Firm-sponsored general education and mobility frictions: Evidence from hospital sponsorship of nursing schools and faculty ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms finance general training when worker mobility frictions make skills de facto specific, directly matching the project’s focus on labor market frictions and knowledge transfer. Its hospital-nursing context is not about inventors or engineers, but it provides strong evidence on how mobility costs shape firm-sponsored human capital investment and diffusion incentives. This study asks why hospitals provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty. This support is striking because nursing education is clearly general, clearly paid by the firm, and information asymmetries appear minimal. Using AHA and survey data, I find hospitals employing a greater share of their MSA's registered nurses are more likely to provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty, net of size and other institutional controls. Given the institutional context, I interpret this result as unusually specific evidence that technologically general skill training may be made de facto-specific by imperfect and costly mobility. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.	Alan Benson
8	2020	Labor mobility from R&D-intensive multinational companies: implications for knowledge and technology transfer ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor mobility as a channel for knowledge and technology transfer, focusing on how workers move out of R&D-intensive multinationals and whether that diffusion reaches other firms. It is especially relevant to the project’s interest in frictions and segmentation in labor markets, since it finds that high-skill workers circulate mainly within a sub-labor market of MNCs and subsidiaries, limiting spillovers to the broader economy. Private sector R&D is largely concentrated in a few multinational companies (MNCs). The mobility of labor between these MNCs and the rest of the economy is therefore an important mechanism for the diffusion of knowledge and technology, but these flows are not without friction. This paper analyses in great detail the flow of labor between firms with specific emphasis on flows to and from R&D intensive MNCs. Using linked employer-employee data for Denmark, we match employees moving from R&D intensive MNCs to other employees switching jobs. We find that employees are more inclined to move between R&D intensive MNCs and their subsidiaries rather than between these firms and other firms in the...	Jacob Rubæk Holm, Bram Timmermans, Christian Richter Østergaard, et al.
8	2023	Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to "Good" Firms? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker preferences and labor market sorting affect talent allocation across firms, which is central to understanding the movement of skilled workers and its consequences for firm outcomes. Its equilibrium analysis of how ESG practices change output, welfare, and skill wage gaps is also relevant to the project’s interest in firm-level hiring decisions, labor market frictions, and economy-wide productivity effects, though it is not directly about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility. We conduct a field experiment in partnership with the largest job platform in Brazil to study how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices of firms affect talent allocation.We find both an average job-seeker's preference for ESG and a large degree of heterogeneity across socioeconomic groups, with the strongest preference displayed by highly educated, white, and politically liberal individuals.We combine our experimental estimates with administrative matched employer-employee microdata and estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market.Counterfactual analyses suggest ESG practices increase total economic output and worker welfare, while increasing the wage gap between...	Emanuele Colonnelli, Timothy McQuade, Gabriel Ramos, et al.
8	2012	A Spatial Knowledge Economy ↗ This paper is closely related because it models costly idea exchange as the agglomeration force and explicitly analyzes how worker mobility differs by skill type, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through labor movement. It is also relevant for studying how mobility frictions shape spatial sorting, skill premia, and the broader distribution of innovation and productivity across locations. Leading empiricists and theorists of cities have recently argued that the generation and exchange of ideas must play a more central role in the analysis of cities. This paper develops the first system of cities model with costly idea exchange as the agglomeration force. Our model replicates a broad set of established facts about the cross section of cities. It provides the first spatial equilibrium theory of why skill premia are higher in larger cities, how variation in these premia emerges from symmetric fundamentals, and why skilled workers have higher migration rates than unskilled workers when both are fully mobile.	Donald R. Davis, Jonathan I. Dingel
8	2021	Dissecting diffusion: Tracing the plurality of factors that shape knowledge diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion in biotechnology and identifies organizational, licensing, complementary asset, and social network factors that shape how inventions spread. While it does not focus primarily on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides useful evidence on the mechanisms governing technology diffusion and the role of firm-level strategies and networks. Knowledge diffusion drives both technical progress and economic growth. In this study, we present a unique comparative case study that examines the diffusion of two comparable, foundational biotechnology inventions – recombinant DNA (rDNA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Using a variety of metrics to trace knowledge diffusion, we find robust evidence that the diffusion of PCR significantly outperforms rDNA. Examining the historical record, we then consider how organizational origin, licensing strategy, complementary assets, industry stage, and early social networks play a role in shaping these processes. Ultimately, we show that reliance on a single diffusion metric or factor is...	Paige Clayton, Lauren Lanahan, Andrew J. Nelson
8	2003	Strategic innovation and technology adoption in an evolving industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how innovation is diffused and commercialized through spin-outs, licensing, and market competition across firms and generations, which speaks directly to technology transfer between firms. Its discussion of empirical implications for non-compete agreements also links it to labor market frictions and the role of employee mobility in knowledge diffusion, though worker movement is not the paper’s central focus. We introduce a racing model with multiple product generations, product innovation, spin-outs, and licensing. Industry conditions and innovation characteristics affect who wins the race and who markets the resulting product. Small firms market their innovations when they pioneer a new generation or improve quality in a young generation and license their innovations in mature generations. If old generation leaders ever market improvements in young generation goods, they do so early on. Leadership in mature generations persists. Tests on the rigid disk drive industry (1977-1997) provide empirical support. The results have implications for antitrust policies and policies governing employee...	Darren Filson, Richard T. Gretz
8	2015	A Global Assessment of Human Capital Mobility: The Role of Non-OECD Destinations ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies high-skilled human capital mobility across countries, which is a key channel for the diffusion of knowledge and technology in the broader economy. Although it focuses on international migration rather than firm-to-firm worker movement or non-compete frictions, its emphasis on skilled migration patterns and determinants provides useful evidence for understanding how mobility shapes the direction and distribution of knowledge transfer. Discussions of high-skilled mobility typically evoke migration patterns from poorer to wealthier countries, which ignore movements to and between developing countries. This paper presents, for the first time, a global overview of human capital mobility through bilateral migration stocks by gender and education in 1990 and 2000, and calculation of nuanced brain drain indicators. Building on newly collated data, the paper uses a novel estimation procedure based on a pseudo-gravity model, then identifies key determinants of international migration, and subsequently uses estimated parameters to impute missing data. Non-OECD destinations account for one-third of skilled-migration, while OECD...	Erhan Artuç, Fredérić Docquier, Çağlar Özden, et al.
8	2021	Living It Up at the Hotel California: Employee Mobility Barriers and Collaborativeness in Firms’ Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how legal barriers to inventor mobility affect firms’ innovation organization and the diffusion of knowledge through mobile inventors. It directly speaks to non-compete-style frictions, inventor mobility, spillovers, and firm responses in collaboration and retention strategies, though its focus is more on within-firm collaborativeness than aggregate productivity effects. Research has long recognized the importance of collaboration for innovation, but relatively little is known about the strategic drivers of collaborative innovation in firms. We posit that robust collaboration within firms can increase the interfirm mobility of inventors and increase spillovers of innovative knowledge to competitors by mobile inventors. Therefore, by mitigating these value capture hazards associated with collaboration, barriers to employee mobility may induce firms to increase collaborativeness in innovation. Additionally, consistent with the mechanism underlying this proposition, we hypothesize that firms whose innovation entails more complex knowledge, which is known to...	Eunkwang Seo, Deepak Somaya
8	2015	What do we know of the mobility of research scientists and of its impact on scientific production This chapter is closely related to the project because it directly reviews the literature on researcher mobility and its impact on scientific production, which is central to understanding how worker movement diffuses knowledge and affects innovation. It is especially relevant for its discussion of inter-sector mobility, career-stage mobility patterns, and the methodological challenges of estimating mobility’s effects on individual productivity and knowledge creation. In this chapter we review the literature on the analysis of researcher mobility and productivity highlighting recent changes in the research system - internationalization, inter-sector mobility and collaboration and career diversification which make researcher mobility more relevant for the dynamics of knowledge creation and dissemination. Our review reveals that to date we still know little about the consequences and motivations of increased mobility for individual researchers. We contribute by presenting a typology of researcher mobility, and considering the relevance of multiple mobility events throughout a researcher career. Finally, we review the modeling problems related to analyzing...	Aldo Geuna, Ana Fernández-Zubieta, Cornelia Lawson
8	2024	Measuring Employer-to-Employer Reallocation ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it measures employer-to-employer worker reallocation, a central empirical margin in the project’s focus on labor mobility and knowledge diffusion. While it is mainly about measurement rather than mechanisms of technology transfer, its corrected EE mobility series is useful for studying how worker movement varies over the cycle and across policy or market frictions. We revisit measurement of employer-to-employer (EE) transitions in the monthly Current Population Survey. The incidence of missing answers to the question on change of employer sharply increases starting with the introduction of a new software instrument to conduct interviews in January 2007 and of the Respondent Identification Policy in 2008–2009. We document nonrandom nonresponse selection by observable and unobservable worker characteristics that correlate with EE mobility. We propose a selection model and a procedure to impute missing answers. Our imputed EE aggregate series no longer trends down after 2000 and restores a close congruence with the business cycle after 2007. (JEL C83...	Shigeru Fujita, Giuseppe Moscarini, Fabien Postel-Vinay
8	2010	Relaxing Hukou - Increased Labor Mobility and China's Economic Geography ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it studies a major institutional barrier to labor mobility in China and its effects on economic geography, which aligns closely with your focus on worker movement frictions and diffusion mechanisms. Even if it does not specifically emphasize knowledge spillovers or invention, changes in mobility restrictions can plausibly affect the spatial allocation of workers, firms, and technology diffusion, making it a strong fit. No abstract available.	Erik Maarten Bosker, Steven Brakman, Harry Garretsen, et al.
8	2003	The Effect of Search Frictions on Wages ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market search frictions using matched worker-firm data, which is directly relevant to understanding how mobility frictions shape worker transitions and wage formation. While it does not focus specifically on knowledge diffusion, inventor mobility, or spillovers, its evidence on frictions, matching, and self-selection informs the broader mechanisms through which mobility constraints can affect the flow of skilled labor and potentially technology. Labor market theories allowing for search frictions make marked predictions on the effect of the degree of frictions on wages. Often, the effect is predicted to be negative. Despite the popularity of these theories, this has never been tested. We perform tests with matched worker-firm data. The worker data are informative on individual wages and labor market transitions, and this allows for estimation of the degree of search frictions. The firm data are informative on labor productivity. The matched data provide the skill composition in different markets. Together this allows us to investigate how the mean difference between labor productivity and wages in a market depends on the degree of...	Gérard J. van den Berg, Aico van Vuuren
8	2011	Competition, human capital and income inequality with limited commitment ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how barriers to competition shape human capital accumulation through changes in workers’ outside options, which is central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Its discussion of knowledge spillovers, limited commitment, and economy-wide effects on income and productivity makes it highly relevant, though it focuses more on business start-up restrictions than on direct worker mobility or inventor movement. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with two-sided limited commitment to study how barriers to competition, such as restrictions to business start-up, affect the incentive to accumulate human capital. We show that a lack of contract enforceability amplifies the effect of barriers to competition on human capital accumulation. High barriers reduce the incentive to accumulate human capital by lowering the outside value of ‘skilled workers’, while low barriers can result in over-accumulation of human capital. This over-accumulation can be socially optimal if there are positive knowledge spillovers. A calibration exercise shows that this mechanism can account for significant...	Ramón Marimon, Vincenzo Quadrini
8	2022	Losing talent by partnering up? The impact of R&D collaboration on employee mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how R&D collaboration affects skilled worker mobility, a central mechanism for technology and knowledge diffusion in your project. Its evidence that collaboration raises outgoing mobility among STEM and highly educated employees by enhancing general human capital speaks directly to how firm interactions shape labor mobility, retention, and spillovers. Firms frequently enter collaborations with other organizations for the purpose of innovating. In this paper, we argue that engaging in R&D collaboration can have the unintended consequence of increasing the mobility of highly skilled personnel. We investigate our research question using a representative dataset that combines information from the Swedish Community Innovation Survey (CIS) with employer–employee registry data. Our econometric analysis shows that R&D collaborations by firms are associated with higher levels of outgoing mobility among skilled employees, particularly among those with technical (“STEM”) education and master's or doctoral degrees. We also find support for the...	Markus Simeth, Ali Mohammadi
8	2012	Lens or Prism? Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows from Public Research ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge flows from public research into firms and evaluates patent citations as a proxy for those flows, which is central to understanding technology diffusion. It is especially relevant for measuring the channels through which knowledge moves across firms and the extent to which patent-based indicators miss private or contract-based transfer that may be affected by labor mobility and other frictions. This paper assesses the validity and accuracy of firms' backward patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows from public research by employing a newly constructed dataset that matches patents to survey data at the level of the R&D lab. Using survey-based measures of the dimensions of knowledge flows, we identify sources of systematic measurement error associated with backward citations to both patent and nonpatent references. We find that patent citations reflect the codified knowledge flows from public research, but they appear to miss knowledge flows that are more private and contract-based in nature, as well as those used in firm basic research. We also find that firms' patenting...	Michael Roach, Wesley M. Cohen
8	2020	Non‐competes, business dynamism, and concentration: Evidence from a Florida case study ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete enforcement as a labor market friction that affects firm entry, job creation, and the geographic concentration of economic activity. While it is more focused on business dynamism and location choice than direct worker mobility or knowledge diffusion, it is highly relevant for understanding how restrictions on worker movement shape aggregate productivity and innovation-related market structure. Abstract Most research on non‐competes has focused on employees; here we study how non‐competes affect firm location choice, growth, and consequent regional concentration, using Florida's 1996 legislative change that eased restrictions on their enforcement. Difference‐in‐differences models show that following the change, establishments of large firms were more likely to enter Florida; they also created a greater proportion of jobs and increased their share of employment in the state. Entrepreneurs or establishments of small firms, in contrast, were less likely to enter Florida following the law change; they also created a smaller proportion of new jobs and decreased their share of...	Hyo Kang, Lee Fleming
8	2022	<i>FBBVA Lecture 2022:</i> What Drives Wage Stagnation: Monopsony or Monopoly? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market monopsony and worker mobility constraints, which are central to understanding how frictions shape wages and firm behavior in the project. It is less directly about knowledge diffusion or innovation spillovers, but its evidence on limited mobility and market power is highly relevant for how hiring, retention, and labor-market frictions affect aggregate outcomes. Abstract Wages for the vast majority of workers have stagnated since the 1980s while, productivity has grown. We investigate two coexisting explanations based on rising market power: (1) monopsony, where dominant firms exploit the limited mobility of their own workers to pay lower wages; and (2) monopoly, where dominant firms charge too high prices for what they sell, which lowers production and the demand for labor, and hence equilibrium wages economy-wide. Using establishment data from the US Census Bureau between 1997 and 2016, we find evidence of both monopoly and monopsony, where the former is rising over this period and the latter is stable. Both contribute to the decoupling of...	Shubhdeep Deb, Jan Eeckhout, Aseem Patel, et al.
8	2012	Creative destruction with on-the-job search ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how on-the-job search affects worker reallocation across firms in response to creative destruction, which is central to understanding labor market frictions and the diffusion of productivity through worker movement. Although it focuses on unemployment and growth rather than explicit knowledge spillovers or inventor mobility, its mechanism of moving workers from low- to high-productivity jobs is highly relevant to the project’s themes. This paper studies the consequences of creative destruction on unemployment in a frictional labor market with on-the-job search. For a benchmark calibration, a 1% increase in growth raises the unemployment rate by 1.72 percentage points in the economy without on-the-job search and by only 0.07 percentage points with on-the-job search. Rather than contributing to unemployment through more frequent job separations, in the presence of on-the-job search, creative destruction induces a direct reallocation of workers from low to high productivity jobs. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.	Jean‐Baptiste Michau
8	2009	The Global Agglomeration of Multinational Firms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how multinational firms cluster across locations and identifies technology diffusion as a key agglomeration force, which connects directly to the project’s interest in knowledge spillovers and technology transfer. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it provides important evidence on the geography of diffusion and how firm-level location choices shape the spread of technology across markets. The explosion of multinational activities in recent decades is rapidly transforming the global landscape of industrial production. But are the emerging clusters of multinational production the rule or the exception? What drives the offshore agglomeration of multinational firms in comparison to the agglomeration of domestic firms? Using a unique worldwide plant-level dataset that reports detailed location, ownership, and operation information for plants in over 100 countries, we construct a spatially continuous index of agglomeration and analyze the different patterns underlying the global economic geography of multinational and non-multinational firms. We present new stylized facts that...	Laura Alfaro, Maggie Chen
8	2021	Peeking Inside the Black Box: Inventor Turnover and Patent Termination ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor turnover as a mechanism for losing tacit knowledge and altering the use of prior inventions, which is central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Its focus on patent termination after inventors leave firms, especially in pharmaceuticals, speaks to how labor market mobility affects firm knowledge retention and innovation outcomes, though it is more about knowledge loss within firms than spillovers across firms. This study examines the consequences of inventor turnover for the termination of the patents they produced beforehand. The proponents of the knowledge-based view consider firms repositories of knowledge and inventors carriers of knowledge who create new inventions through recombination. I argue that because the knowledge about inventions resides with inventors, turnover among them may adversely affect the future use of their inventions due to the loss of tacit knowledge. As a result, firms are more likely to terminate the patents of inventors who have left than of inventors who remain. Further, the patterns of collaboration between departed inventors and others influence the aforementioned...	Rajat Khanna
8	2018	Labour mobility, skill-relatedness and new plant survival across different development stages of an industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for transferring skills across firms and industries, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through labor markets. Its focus on how different kinds of recruits affect new plant survival across industry life-cycle stages provides useful evidence on the direction and quality of spillovers, though it is more about plant performance than broader technology diffusion or policy frictions like non-competes. Labour mobility is often considered a crucial factor for regional development. However, labour mobility is not good per se for local firms. There is increasing evidence that labour recruited from skill-related industries has a positive effect on plant performance, in contrast to intra-industry labour recruits. However, little is known about which types of labour are recruited in different stages of the evolution of an industry, and whether that matters for plant performance. This paper attempts to fill these gaps in the literature using linked employee–employer data at the plant level for manufacturing and services industries in the Netherlands for the period 2001–2009. Our study focuses on...	Riccardo Cappelli, Ron Boschma, Anet Weterings
8	2011	Book Translations as Idea Flows: The Effects of the Collapse of Communism on the Diffusion of Knowledge ↗ [Title only] This paper is highly likely to be relevant because it studies how knowledge diffuses across countries through book translations, which is a direct channel of idea flows and technology transfer. Although it is not centered on worker mobility or labor market frictions, the collapse of communism provides a natural experiment for changes in diffusion barriers, making it useful for thinking about broader mechanisms of knowledge transmission. No abstract available.	Ran Abramitzky, Isabelle Sin
8	2023	Firm Market Power, Worker Mobility, and Wages in the US Labor Market ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how employer market power affects worker mobility and wages, which is central to understanding labor-market frictions that can impede knowledge diffusion. Although it is not specifically about technology spillovers or inventor mobility, its theory and quantification of reduced transitions across employers are directly relevant to the project’s interest in how mobility constraints shape the movement of workers and the broader consequences for firms and the economy. Worker mobility and wages have declined in the United States amid rising employer market power. I propose a theory of the labor market in which a decrease in employer competition, characterized by fewer firms per worker, drives the decline in worker mobility and wages. A finite and decreasing number of employers exert market power by excluding their offers from the outside options of their employees. This reduces the value of workers’ outside options and, consequently, their wages and transitions across employers. I quantify the model to explain the long-run decline in worker mobility and wages and examine its cross-sectional implications.	Sadhika Bagga
8	2007	Do Multinationals' R&D Activities Stimulate Indigenous Entrepreneurship? Evidence from China's "Silicon Valley" ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion through firm activity, showing that multinational R&D stimulates entry and R&D by domestic firms via spillovers of advanced knowledge. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it is highly relevant to the broader theme of technology diffusion, entrepreneurship, and productivity effects from cross-firm knowledge transfer. Using a unique firm-level dataset from China's "Silicon Valley," we investigate how multinational enterprises (MNEs) affect local entrepreneurship and R&D activities upon entry. We find that R&D activities of MNEs in an industry stimulate entry of domestic firms into the same industry and enhance R&D activities of newly entering domestic firms. By contrast, MNEs' production activities or domestic firms' R&D activities do not have such effect. Since MNEs are technologically more advanced than domestic firms, our findings suggest that diffusion of MNEs' advanced knowledge to potential indigenous entrepreneurs through MNEs' R&D stimulates entry of domestic firms.	Hongbin Cai, Yasuyuki Todo, Lian Zhou
8	2009	Who Invents?: Evidence from the Japan-U.S. inventor survey This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventor mobility and how it is associated with access to outside information and patent value, which are central to knowledge diffusion. It also compares U.S. and Japan, highlighting how institutional differences may shape inventor careers and mobility, though it is more descriptive than a direct study of labor-market frictions or policy effects. Human resources are increasingly seen as a key to innovation competitiveness, and there is a need for detailed, systematic data on the demographics of inventors, their motivations, and their careers. To gain systematic data on who invents, we collected detailed information on a sample of inventors in the U.S. and Japan (the RIETI-Georgia Tech inventor survey). The data come from a unique set of matched surveys of U.S. and Japanese inventors of triadic patents, i.e., patents from patent families with granted patents in the U.S. and applications filed in Japan and in the EPO, with data from over 1900 responses from the U.S. and over 3600 responses from Japan. Based on these survey data, we...	John P. Walsh, Sadao Nagaoka
8	2014	Capacities and Absorptive Barriers for International R&D Spillovers through Intermediate Inputs This paper is closely related because it studies how R&D spillovers diffuse across countries and how labor market regulation affects the absorption of foreign knowledge, which fits your focus on frictions that shape technology diffusion. It is not about worker mobility or inventor movement directly, but it provides useful evidence on broader institutional barriers and channels of knowledge transfer relevant to aggregate productivity and innovation. Abstract Trade in goods and services is likely to be an important channel for international knowledge diffusion. This paper considers the extent of R&D spillovers through intermediate inputs for a sample of up to 40 developed and developing countries. Results suggest that such spillovers are present and are economically important. We find that countries and industries initially further behind the technological frontier enjoy stronger foreign R&D spillovers. Furthermore, foreign R&D spillovers are stronger in countries with greater absorptive capacity as measured by average years of secondary schooling and R&D spending. In terms of absorption barriers, the results are mixed With the...	Neil Foster‐McGregor, Johannes Pöschl, Robert Stehrer
8	2021	Noncompete Clauses, Job Mobility, and Job Quality: Evidence from a Low-Earning Noncompete Ban in Austria ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how noncompete agreements affect worker mobility, a central labor market friction in your project. It also speaks to the quality and direction of mobility by showing that easing noncompete restrictions raises job-to-job moves, especially within industry and toward higher-quality firms, though it does not directly analyze knowledge diffusion or innovation outcomes. I study the effect of noncompete agreements on low-earning workers using a noncompete ban in Austria. The ban increased treated workers’ annual job-to-job transition rate by 0.3 percentage points (a two percent increase). This effect was driven by within-industry job transitions. The reform also disproportionately increased transitions to higher-quality firms and transitions accompanied by earnings gains. However, I do not find that the ban increased treated workers’ overall earnings growth rates. This evidence shows that noncompetes in Austria restricted low-earning workers’ job mobility but that their impact was not large enough to affect aggregate mobility or earnings trends. ∗I thank...	Samuel G. Young
8	2022	Nest without birds: Inventor mobility and the left-behind patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge transfer and how the departure of skilled workers affects the fate of firm-specific inventions. It also speaks to firm responses to mobility frictions and competitive interactions by showing how left-behind patents are managed after inventors move, which is highly relevant to knowledge diffusion and innovation dynamics. The mobility of inventors leaves behind their patented inventions at sourcing firms, yet there is little scholarly insight into how firms handle those intellectual properties. We investigate this important issue by developing a framework of tacit-codified knowledge interdependence. We theorize that tacit and codified knowledge offer the intellectual and legal pillars of corporate inventions, which complement each other in value creation. Inventor mobility decouples the two pillars and reduces the maintenance likelihood of the left-behind patents. The negative impact is greater for inventions that are complex or rely less on internal prior art because the tacit knowledge loss is more...	Qinyu Ryan Wang, Yanfeng Zheng
8	2010	Technology Diffusion and Postwar Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion across countries and how faster adoption of new technologies drives postwar growth, which speaks directly to the mechanisms of knowledge transfer central to the project. However, it focuses on country-level technology transfer and aid rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention decisions. In the aftermath of World War II, the world's economies exhibited very different rates of economic recovery. We provide evidence that those countries that caught up the most with the U.S. in the postwar period are those that also saw an acceleration in the speed of adoption of new technologies. This acceleration is correlated with the incidence of U.S. economic aid and technical assistance in the same period. We interpret this as supportive of the interpretation that technology transfers from the U.S. to Western European countries and Japan were an important factor in driving growth in these recipient countries during the postwar decades.	Diego Comín, Bart Hobijn, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
8	2016	Balanced growth path solutions of a Boltzmann mean field game model for knowledge growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a formal model of knowledge growth and diffusion across agents, which is central to how skills and ideas spread in the economy. However, it focuses more on aggregate balanced growth and learning interactions than on labor mobility, worker frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention decisions. In this paper we study balanced growth path solutions of a Boltzmann mean field game model proposed by Lucas and Moll [15] to model knowledge growth in an economy.Agents can either increase their knowledge level by exchanging ideas in learning events or by producing goods with the knowledge they already have.The existence of balanced growth path solutions implies exponential growth of the overall production in time. We prove existence of balanced growth path solutions if the initial distribution of individuals with respect to their knowledge level satisfiesa Pareto-tail condition. Furthermore we give first insights into the existence of such solutions if in addition to production and...	Martin Burger, Alexander Lorz, Marie-Thérèse Wolfram, et al.
8	2016	On a Boltzmann Mean Field Model for Knowledge Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a mean field model of knowledge growth, directly engaging with how knowledge accumulates and diffuses across agents in an economy. While it is more theoretical and mathematical than focused on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides a useful framework for understanding endogenous knowledge transmission and growth dynamics. In this paper we analyze a Boltzmann-type mean field game model for knowledge growth, which was proposed by Lucas et al. [J. Political Econ., 122 (2014), pp. 1--51]. We discuss the underlying mathematical model, which consists of a coupled system of a Boltzmann-type equation for the agent density and a Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman equation for the optimal strategy. We study the analytic features of each equation separately and show local in time existence and uniqueness for the fully coupled system. Furthermore we focus on the construction and existence of special solutions, which relate to exponential growth in time---so-called balanced growth path solutions. Finally, we illustrate the...	Martin Burger, Alexander Lorz, Marie-Thérèse Wolfram
8	2017	Job Mobility and Creative Destruction: Flexicurity in the Land of Schumpeter ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a focus on worker job mobility and its role in Schumpeterian creative destruction, which is highly aligned with knowledge diffusion, firm turnover, and productivity dynamics. "Flexicurity" also hints at labor market institutions and mobility frictions, making it likely relevant to how policy affects worker reallocation and innovation. No abstract available.	Andreas Kettemann, Françis Kramarz, Josef Zweimmller
8	2018	Strategic human capital management in the context of cross‐industry and within‐industry mobility frictions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how mobility frictions, especially noncompete enforceability, affect worker tenure, hiring, training, and the firm’s make-versus-buy decision for human capital. It is less directly about knowledge diffusion or innovation outcomes, but it provides useful evidence on how restrictions on worker movement shape internal skill formation and labor-market frictions that are central to the project. Research Summary : We develop and test a theory examining how frictions that restrict mobility across industries and frictions constraining mobility within an industry can co‐occur to effectively isolate individual human capital, ultimately changing the firm's make‐versus‐buy decision for human capital. Empirically, we demonstrate that when cross‐industry frictions in the form of limited skill transferability and within‐industry frictions in the form of noncompete enforceability are both present, employees exhibit longer tenures, firms hire workers with less initial experience, firms change the amount and nature of training provided, and wages marginally increase. These findings suggest...	Evan Starr, Martin Ganco, Benjamin A. Campbell
8	2022	Flow of Ideas: Economic Societies and the Rise of Useful Knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how institutions facilitated the diffusion of useful knowledge across regions and influenced innovation, patenting, and industrial production. Its evidence on localized knowledge spillovers, skilled worker density, and the direction of technological progress speaks directly to the project’s focus on technology diffusion and the role of labor and knowledge mobility, even though it is not specifically about worker movement frictions or non-competes. Economic societies emerged during the late eighteenth-century. We argue that these institutions reduced the costs of accessing useful knowledge by adopting, producing, and diffusing new ideas. Combining location information for the universe of 3,300 members across active economic societies in Germany with those of patent holders and World’s Fair exhibitors, we show that regions with more members were more innovative in the late nineteenth-century. This long-lasting effect of societies arguably arose through agglomeration economies and localized knowledge spillovers. To support this claim, we provide evidence suggesting an immediate increase in manufacturing, an earlier establishment of...	Julius Koschnick, Erik Hornung, Francesco Cinnirella
8	2024	LAST BUT NOT LEAST: LAGGARD FIRMS, TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION, AND ITS STRUCTURAL AND POLICY DETERMINANTS ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology and knowledge diffusion barriers across firms and how skill intensity, absorptive capacity, and frictions slow catch-up among laggards. While it does not focus directly on worker mobility or labor market restrictions like non-competes, its emphasis on tacit knowledge, skills, and diffusion frictions speaks to the broader mechanisms in the project. Abstract Using a unique microaggregated data set on firm‐level productivity in 13 countries from 1995 to 2014, this article provides new evidence on technology‐ and knowledge‐diffusion barriers for laggard firms. We show that, although the least productive firms benefit from a catch‐up effect, their speed of catchup is lower in digital‐ and skill‐intensive industries. This is especially true in countries with high skill mismatch, high financing frictions, and low absorptive capacity. These barriers to diffusion, combined with the rising importance of tacit knowledge and intangibles, could help explain the productivity growth slowdown observed in the last decades.	Giuseppe Berlingieri, Sara Calligaris, Chiara Criscuolo, et al.
8	2012	An Empirical Analysis of On-the-Job Search and Job-to-Job Transitions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search and job-to-job transitions, which are central labor-market mechanisms through which workers move across firms and can carry knowledge with them. While it does not directly analyze technology diffusion, non-competes, or inventor mobility, its focus on mobility frictions, wage outcomes, and heterogeneous search motives is highly relevant to understanding how worker movement shapes knowledge transfer and aggregate outcomes. This paper provides a set of simple stylized facts regarding on-the-job search and job-to-job transitions using the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS is unique in that it asks employed workers whether they search on the job and, if so, why. I find that workers search on the job for very different reasons, which lead to different outcomes in both mobility and wage growth. A nontrivial fraction of workers engage in on-thejob search due to a fear of losing their job. This group mimics many known features of unemployed workers, such as wage losses upon finding a job. Workers also search on the job because they are unsatisfied with their job. The unsatisfied workers are roughly equally split...	Shigeru Fujita
8	2022	Monopsony Power and Wages: Evidence from the Introduction of Serfdom in Denmark ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a severe labor mobility restriction increases monopsony power and lowers wages, which speaks directly to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and worker movement. It is especially relevant for the mechanism by which mobility constraints block apprenticeship and potentially impede the transfer of skills and knowledge across locations and occupations. Abstract We exploit a large historical shock to the Danish labour market to provide evidence of how restrictions on labour mobility increase monopsony power and thereby reduce wages. By severely limiting the possibility of the rural population to work beyond their place of birth, the reintroduction of serfdom in 1733 aimed to increase monopsony power and secure cheaper labour in the countryside. Using a unique data source based on the archives of estates from the eighteenth century, we test whether serfdom affected the wages of farmhands more strongly than other groups in the labour market, and results based on a difference-in-differences approach reveal evidence consistent with a strong...	Kathryn Gary, Peter Sandholt Jensen, Mats Olsson, et al.
8	2015	Competitive on-the-job search ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search and job-to-job transitions as the mechanism through which workers move across firms, which is central to how knowledge and skills can diffuse in labor markets. While it does not directly model technology spillovers, inventor mobility, or non-compete policies, its directed search and firm heterogeneity framework is highly relevant for understanding how labor market frictions shape worker allocation and the transmission of productivity advantages across firms. The paper proposes a model of on-the-job search and industry dynamics in which search is directed. Firms permanently differ in productivity levels, their production function features constant returns to scale, and search costs are convex in search intensity. Wages are determined in a competitive manner, as firms advertise wage contracts (expected discounted incomes) so as to balance wage costs and search costs (queue length). Firms are assumed to sort out their coordination problems with their employees in such a way that the on-the-job search behavior of workers maximizes the match surplus. Our model has several novel features. First, it is close in spirit to the competitive model, with a...	Pietro Garibaldi, Espen R. Moen, Dag Einar Sommervoll
8	2016	Globalization, Worker Mobility and Wage Inequality ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility across firms in a frictional labor market and shows how trade changes the incentives and returns to inter-firm movement. Its focus is more on wage inequality and trade than on knowledge diffusion or innovation specifically, but the mechanisms of on-the-job search, labor market frictions, and firm-level reallocation are highly relevant to the project. Abstract In the present paper, I integrate frictional labor markets with on‐the‐job search into an otherwise standard heterogeneous firm model of intra‐industry trade. Most importantly, I show that the returns to workers' inter‐firm mobility are higher in a trade equilibrium than in autarky. Intuitively, by favoring large and productive firms, international trade amplifies the disparities in profitability between small and large firms. Hence, the returns to labor reallocation across firms rise. In view of the empirically observed higher inter‐firm mobility among high‐skill workers, this suggests a skill‐biased impact of trade liberalization.	Damir Stijepic
8	2023	How to poach the talents? Role of social capital and contextual knowledge base ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies learning-by-hiring as a mechanism of knowledge transfer through inventor mobility, which is central to worker-driven technology diffusion in your project. It also examines how the hiring firm’s knowledge base conditions the success of poaching talented inventors, offering useful evidence on firm-level hiring decisions and the quality of spillovers. Why do some talent mobility events succeed with big news while others result in silent failure? Recruiting experienced inventors is an important way for hiring firms to get information and reach external knowledge to gain a competitive advantage in the digital era. This research considers learning-by-hiring (LBH) to be a process of knowledge transfer from the recruit to the hiring firm and identifies the influential factors in this process. We develop an integrated model to depict the relationship among the social capital of the recruit, knowledge base of the hiring firm, and corresponding knowledge transfer performance. By combining PATSTAT and COMPUSTAT databases, we identify 25,618...	Jing Shi, Jiajie Wang, Lele Kang, et al.
8	2022	Understanding “reverse” knowledge flows following inventor exit in the semiconductor industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor exit as a channel for knowledge transfer between firms, directly matching the project’s focus on worker mobility and technology diffusion. Its emphasis on semiconductor firms, geographic and technological distance, and reverse knowledge flows is especially relevant for understanding how labor market frictions shape the direction and intensity of spillovers. Organizational learning research suggests that employee exit lowers firm performance by eroding its human and social capital. We have a rather limited understanding of the conditions under which exit from a focal firm, defined as the firm from which exit takes place, may stimulate learning and reverse knowledge flows from the hiring firm. We developed a model of learning-by-exit to address this gap and tested it using a long panel of data (1985–2012) from the semiconductor industry. Our model suggests that the focal firm is likely to benefit more from reverse knowledge flows from the hiring firm when it is less aware of the latter. A focal firm is less aware of the hiring firm when there...	Mayank Varshney, Amit Jain
8	2023	Collaboration and connectivity: Historical evidence from patent records ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how lower travel costs increase inventor collaboration, directly linking mobility frictions to the diffusion of knowledge and innovation. Its historical evidence on railroad access shaping long-distance inventive partnerships speaks to the project’s core themes of worker/inventor mobility, connectivity, and technology diffusion, though it is more about collaboration than labor-market frictions like non-competes or hiring policies. Why has collaboration become increasingly central to technological progress? We document the role of lowered travel costs by combining patent data with the rollout of the Swedish railroad network in the 19th and early-20th century. Inventors that gain access to the network are more likely to produce collaborative patents, which is partly driven by long-distance collaborations with other inventors residing along the emerging railroad network. These results suggest that the declining costs of interacting with others is fundamental to account for the long-term increase in inventive collaboration.	Thor Berger, Erik Prawitz
8	2015	An Assignment Model of Knowledge Diffusion and Income Inequality ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion through teacher-student assignment, a mechanism analogous to worker mobility and human-capital transfer across agents. It is less directly about labor market frictions or firm dynamics, but it provides useful theory on how competitive matching affects the spread of knowledge, growth, and earnings inequality. Randomness in individual discovery disperses productivities, whereas learning from others keeps productivities together. Long-run growth and persistent earnings inequality emerge when these two mechanisms for knowledge accumulation are combined. This paper considers an economy in which those with more useful knowledge can teach others, with competitive markets assigning students to teachers. In equilibrium, students with an ability to learn quickly are assigned to teachers with the most productive knowledge. This sorting on ability implies large differences in earnings distributions conditional on ability, as shown using explicit formulas for the tail behavior of these distributions.	Erzo G. J. Luttmer
8	2015	Cyclical Reallocation of Workers Across Employers by Firm Size and Firm Wage ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it studies worker reallocation across employers, which is directly connected to labor mobility and matching frictions. The focus on firm size and firm wage suggests it may shed light on how job-to-job moves, wage setting, and employer characteristics shape the diffusion of workers and potentially knowledge across firms, though it may be more labor-market cyclical than explicitly about technology spillovers. No abstract available.	John Haltiwanger, Henry R. Hyatt, Erika McEntarfer
8	2022	The effects of terrorist attacks on inventor productivity and mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism affecting the allocation of innovative talent across firms and the resulting impact on patenting and invention quality. It is especially relevant for understanding how shocks and frictions influence knowledge diffusion, though it focuses on terrorist attacks rather than policy-induced labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. We investigate the impact of deadly terrorist attacks on inventor productivity and mobility in the U.S. During the five-year window after such events, nearby firms generate fewer and less impactful inventions. Moreover, their inventors typically exhibit a post-attack decline in their patent production, unless they move to a distant company (which some tend to do after an attack). Firms' financial constraints and inventor talent appear to provide channels underlying our productivity and mobility findings, respectively. These results provide novel insights about the impact of shocks that distort the invention process and promote the mobility and reallocation of inventors among firms.	Eliezer M. Fich, Tung Nguyen, Dimitris Petmezas
8	2019	Non-Compete Agreements: A Review of the Literature ↗ This review is highly relevant because non-compete agreements are one of the central labor market frictions in the project, directly affecting worker mobility and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Although it is a literature review rather than an original empirical study of spillovers or growth, it should provide useful synthesis on how NCAs influence firm investment, bargaining, and the allocation of talent. Non-compete agreements (NCAs) are employment contracts that limit the post-employment options of workers. On the one hand, they potentially solve an investment hold-up problem, allowing firms to make mutually beneficial investments in workers. On the other hand, the agreements potentially erode workers’ future bargaining position by limiting their outside options. In this paper, we review the economic literature on non-compete agreements in the U.S.	John M. McAdams
8	2021	The firm-level link between productivity dispersion and wage inequality: A symptom of low job mobility? ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how job mobility frictions shape wage premia across firms and how limited mobility affects the pass-through from productivity differences to wages. While it focuses more on wage inequality and firm-level pricing than on knowledge diffusion itself, its mobility-and-reallocation mechanism is highly relevant to the project’s themes of labor market frictions, worker movement, and their economy-wide effects. Differences in average wages across firms – which account for around one-half of overall wage inequality – are mainly explained by differences in firm wage premia (the part of wages that depends exclusively on characteristics of firms) rather than workforce composition. Using a new cross-country dataset of linked employer-employee data, this paper investigates the role of cross-firm dispersion in productivity in explaining dispersion in firm wage premia, as well as the factors shaping the link between productivity and wages at the firm level. The results suggest that around 15% of cross-firm differences in productivity are passed on to differences in firm wage premia. The degree of...
8	2016	Spillovers, absorptive capacity and agglomeration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers from firms’ R&D, which are central to technology diffusion and productivity growth in the project. It is also relevant through firm heterogeneity and agglomeration patterns, though it focuses on geographic spillovers and absorptive capacity rather than worker mobility or labor market frictions directly. I study knowledge spillovers in an industry where firms are heterogeneous in their ability to adopt knowledge (absorptive capacity). I set up a model in which firms choose locations anticipating potential gains and losses from other firms’ R&D activity. I apply the model to the US software industry and obtain the following results: the data supports localized knowledge spillovers; firms that have higher absorptive capacity are sorted into more agglomerated counties; ignoring firm heterogeneity leads to biased estimates of gains from spillovers; spillovers play an important role in explaining the geographic distribution of firms, but only within regions with high R&D activity.	Sergey Lychagin
8	2020	Hiring new key inventors to improve firms’ post‐M&A inventive output ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how hiring key inventors affects inventive output and knowledge creation within firms, which is central to understanding worker movement and technology diffusion. Although it focuses on post-M&A hiring rather than broader labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs, it speaks directly to how firms use inventor mobility and recruitment to sustain innovation and internal spillovers. Although merger and acquisitions (M&As) are acknowledged as an important means to access innovative assets and know‐how, firms’ inventive output often declines in the post‐M&A period. Financial, managerial and organizational constraints related to the M&A event contribute to inventive output declines and inventors’ departure. Prior literature treats the acquiring firm as a passive observer of invention declines. This study argues that acquiring firms can take measures by hiring new key inventors. We show that the hiring of new key inventors in the post‐M&A period can counteract invention declines in two ways. First, these newly hired inventors are associated with an increase of corporate...	Marta F. Arroyabe, Katrin Hussinger, John Hagedoorn
8	2022	Sitting on the Fence: Integrating the two worlds of scientific discovery and invention within the firm ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms organize scientific discovery and invention, which directly connects to the creation and internal diffusion of knowledge within firms. Its focus on tradeoffs between integrated and specialized R&D, publication, patents, and spillins is highly relevant to understanding how firm-level organization shapes technology diffusion and innovation outcomes. Applying a within-firm perspective to the topic of the division of innovative labor, I explore the organization of scientific discovery at the firm level — specialized or integrated with invention. Using data on inventors and authors related to U.S. publicly-traded science-performing firms for the period 1980–2015, the paper deepens our understanding of the determinants and the tradeoffs associated with the strategic choice of scientific discovery organization. I show that integration is related to a tradeoff between short-term applied R&D and long-term fundamental R&D; while integration is beneficial for invention, it has adverse effects on its scientific output, which decrease invention...	Sheer Lia
8	2022	Hiring High-Skilled Labor through Mergers and Acquisitions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms obtain high-skilled labor when direct hiring is constrained, which speaks to labor market frictions and the movement of skilled workers as a channel for knowledge and capability transfer. While the focus is on mergers and acquisitions rather than diffusion of technology per se, it is highly relevant to firm responses to mobility constraints and the role of skilled labor in shaping firm dynamics and productivity. Abstract Using random H-1B visa lotteries as a natural experiment, we find that firms respond to shortages of high-skilled workers by acquiring firms that employ such workers. The effect is stronger among firms with high human capital and more senior workforces, firms facing tight labor markets and legal barriers to poaching workers, and firms lacking foreign affiliates. The acquired workers are highly educated, sharing skills and occupations similar to those of the acquirer’s existing workers. Our findings suggest skilled labor is an important driver of acquisitions and acquiring is an effective means of obtaining skilled labor.	Jun Chen, Shenje Hshieh, Feng Zhang
8	2023	Human capital and the diffusion of technology ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how human capital shapes the diffusion and adoption of technology, which is central to understanding knowledge transfer and productivity growth. However, it focuses on cross-country education and adoption lags rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level mechanisms like inventors moving across employers. This research provides novel evidence that human capital affects the diffusion of technologies across countries. More human capital is associated with shorter adoption lags and greater intensity of use of new technologies, providing a link between education and economic backwardness.	Matteo Cervellati, Gerrit Meyerheim, Uwe Sunde
8	2020	Bad Jobs and Low Inflation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies firms competing to retain and attract workers who search on the job, directly linking labor market frictions and mobility to wage setting and firm behavior. While its main focus is inflation rather than knowledge diffusion, the mechanism of on-the-job search and worker movement is highly relevant to how mobility affects firm competition and aggregate outcomes. We study a model in which firms compete to retain and attract workers searching on the job. A drop in the rate of on-the-job search makes such wage competition less likely, reducing expected labor costs and lowering inflation. This model explains why inflation has remained subdued over the last decade, which is a conundrum for general equilibrium models and Phillips curves. Key to this success is the observed slowdown in the recovery of the employment-to-employment transition rate in the last five years, which is interpreted by the model as a decline in the share of employed workers searching for a job. This fall in the on-the-job search rate is corroborated by the micro data.	Renato Faccini, Leonardo Melosi
8	2017	A Distributional Framework for Matched Employer Employee Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies matched employer-employee data with endogenous mobility, worker-firm sorting, and wage effects on mobility, which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape worker movement. While it does not directly analyze knowledge diffusion or innovation, its framework and evidence on worker-firm interactions provide useful tools for studying how mobility transmits skills and affects firm outcomes. We propose a framework to identify and estimate earnings distributions and worker composition on matched panel data, allowing for two‐sided worker‐firm unobserved heterogeneity and complementarities in earnings. We introduce two models: a static model that allows for nonlinear interactions between workers and firms, and a dynamic model that allows, in addition, for Markovian earnings dynamics and endogenous mobility. We show that this framework nests a number of structural models of wages and worker mobility. We establish identification in short panels, and develop tractable two‐step estimators where firms are classified in a first step. Applying our method to Swedish administrative data...	Stéphane Bonhomme, Thibaut Lamadon, Elena Manresa
8	2020	Multiple applications, competing mechanisms, and market power ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market search frictions, multiple applications, and firm market power in hiring, all of which directly affect worker mobility and the allocation of talent across firms. Its focus on how contract design and equilibrium inefficiencies shape offers and matching outcomes is relevant to the project’s broader interest in how labor market frictions influence knowledge diffusion through worker movement. We consider a labor market with search frictions in which workers make multiple applications and firms can post and commit to general mechanisms that may be conditioned both on the number of applications received and on the number of offers received by its candidate. When the contract space includes application fees, there exists a continuum of equilibria of which only one is socially efficient. In the inefficient equilibria, firms have market power that arises from the fact that the value of a worker’s application portfolio depends on what other firms offer, which allows individual firms to free ride and offer workers less than their marginal contribution. Finally, by allowing for general...	James Albrecht, Xiaoming Cai, Pieter A. Gautier, et al.
8	2015	Hukou and Highways: The Impact of China's Spatial Development Policies on Urbanization and Regional Inequality ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies a major labor mobility restriction (China’s Hukou system) and quantifies how loosening it changes migration, urbanization, and welfare. While it is more focused on spatial development and regional inequality than on firm-level knowledge diffusion, it directly speaks to how mobility frictions shape the allocation of workers to more productive locations. China has used two main spatial policies to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a 96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper develops a structural new economic geography model to examine the impacts of these policies. Fitting the model to available data allows simulating counterfactual scenarios comparing each policy’s respective impact on regional economic development and urbanization patterns across China. The results suggest large overall economic benefits from constructing the national expressway network and abolishing the Hukou system. Yet...	Maarten Bosker, Uwe Deichmann, Mark S. Roberts
8	2004	Learning, Internal Research, and Spillovers Evidence from a Sample of R&D Laboratories This paper is closely related because it studies R&D spillovers and how outside knowledge reshapes firms’ internal learning and research choices, which is central to understanding technology diffusion and knowledge transfer. However, it focuses on spillovers through R&D laboratories and external knowledge sources rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or policies like non-competes. This paper presents new evidence on the practice of industrial Research and Development (R&D), especially the allocation between learning and internal research, and the role of outside knowledge, as represented by R&D spillovers, in reshaping this allocation. The evidence describes the sources of outside knowledge, portrays the flow of that knowledge into firms, and interprets the channels by which outside knowledge influences R&D. The empirical work is based on a sample of 220 R&D laboratories owned by 115 firms in the U.S. chemicals, machinery, electrical equipment, and motor vehicles industries. The findings are consistent with the view that universities and firms generate technological...	James D. Adams
8	2006	Strategic R&D Location by Multinational Firms: Spillovers, Technology Sourcing, and Competition ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it focuses on strategic R&D location, spillovers, and technology sourcing, all of which are central to understanding how knowledge moves across firms and places. It may be somewhat less directly tied to worker mobility or labor market frictions than papers explicitly about inventors, non-competes, or search, but multinational firm location decisions are still likely to shape diffusion and innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	René Belderbos, Elissavet Lykogianni, Reinhilde Veugelers
8	2020	Worker Mobility and Domestic Production Networks ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for transferring human capital and knowledge across firms, with direct evidence on firm-to-firm moves and productivity effects. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on how labor flows shape technology diffusion, though it emphasizes domestic production networks and supply-chain links rather than non-competes or inventor mobility specifically. We show that domestic production networks shape worker flows between firms. Data on the universe of firm-to-firm transactions for the Dominican Republic, matched with employer-employee records, reveals that about 20 percent of workers who change firms move to a buyer or supplier of their original firm. This is a considerably larger share than would be implied by a random allocation of movers to firms. We find considerable gains associated with this form of hiring: higher worker wages, lower job separation rates, faster firm productivity growth, and faster coworker wage growth. Hiring workers from a supplier is followed by a rising share of purchases from that supplier. These findings...	Marvin Cardoza, Francesco Grigoli, Nicola Pierri, et al.
8	2017	Do Foreign Experts Increase the Productivity of Domestic Firms? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the movement of skilled workers across borders transmits knowledge and raises firm productivity, which is central to worker-mediated technology diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how hiring foreign experts affects domestic firms’ wage structure and productivity, though it is less directly about labor market frictions like non-competes or endogenous growth dynamics. Abstract While most countries welcome (and some even subsidize) high‐skilled immigrants, there is very limited evidence of their importance for domestic firms. To guide our empirical analysis, we first set up a simple theoretical model to show how foreign experts can affect the productivity and wages of domestic firms. Using matched worker–firm data from Denmark and a matching difference‐in‐differences approach, we then find that firms that hire foreign experts instead of domestic experts become more productive, in the sense that they pay higher wages to high‐skilled co‐workers.	Nikolaj Malchow‐Møller, Jakob Roland Munch, Jan Rose Skaksen
8	2022	Executives’ Foreign Work Experience and International Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from China ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how workers’ prior cross-border labor mobility, specifically executives’ foreign work experience, transmits knowledge into firms and affects patent-based innovation outcomes. It speaks directly to knowledge diffusion through labor-market-linked human capital transfer, though it focuses on executives and international spillovers rather than broader worker mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs. This study conducts a quantitative study on international knowledge spillovers by executives with foreign work experiences at Chinese firms. We use companies’ foreign patent citations as a proxy for international knowledge inflows and match the data with companies’ executives with foreign work experience. The results show that executives with overseas work experience generate international knowledge inflows to the firm; this linkage is influenced by the innovation capacities of the outflow countries and specific positions of the firm’s executives. The knowledge inflows enhance firms’ innovation capacities, as evidenced by an increase in the number of patent applications and citations.	Feng Guo, Xinjie Hu, Kai Wang, et al.
8	2013	Employee Poaching: Why It Can Be Predatory ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee poaching as a strategic labor-market mechanism through which firms can weaken rivals by hiring away workers, directly linking worker mobility to competition and knowledge transfer. While it is more about predatory hiring and match quality than technology diffusion per se, its focus on post-employment frictions and employer responses makes it highly relevant to how mobility constraints shape firm dynamics and spillovers. There is a growing concern over predatory hiring practices that are aimed at eliminating competitors. Using a duopoly model in which firm's profits depend on the quality of the worker–employer match, this paper studies the conditions under which predatory equilibrium exists. I find that predatory hiring can occur when the match between the worker and the new employer is relatively poor, and the old employer has a shallow pool of replacement candidates. Post-employment lawsuits do not affect the range of predatory equilibrium if the parties take into account expected damages payment. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.	Jin‐Hyuk Kim
8	2024	Employment restrictions on resource transferability and value appropriation from employees ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies noncompete agreements and other employment restrictions that limit worker mobility and the transfer of firm knowledge and resources. It also speaks to how labor market frictions shape worker earnings and firms’ ability to appropriate and retain embedded know-how, which is central to the project’s focus on knowledge diffusion and mobility frictions. Abstract Research Summary We examine the joint adoption of four employment restrictions that limit firm resource outflows—nondisclosure (NDA), non‐solicitation, non‐recruitment, and noncompete agreements—and their associations with value appropriation from employees. Using novel individual‐ and firm‐level survey data, we find that when firms adopt restrictions, they tend to adopt either all four restrictions or only an NDA. Adoption of all four restrictions is more likely when workers have access to valuable resources, noncompetes are more enforceable, and states adopt the inevitable disclosure doctrine. Employees with all four restrictions earn 5.4% less than employees with only NDAs, and...	Natarajan Balasubramanian, Evan Starr, Shotaro Yamaguchi
8	2023	A Global View of Creative Destruction ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how trade-driven creative destruction accelerates technology diffusion across countries, which is central to understanding how knowledge spreads through economic agents and markets. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, but it is highly relevant for the broader mechanism of innovation diffusion, firm turnover, and the aggregate effects of policy on technology transmission. We formulate a two-country model of trade and creative destruction by domestic and foreign firms. In the model, trade liberalization quickens the pace of creative destruction and the flow of technology across countries. International idea flows are essential for understanding why country technologies do not drift apart and for matching two empirical facts. First, contracting firms are more likely to lose exports than domestic sales, whereas the opposite is true for expanding firms. Second, the product composition of a country’s exports exhibits ample turnover. In our model, a country’s comparative advantage is constantly shifting due to global creative destruction.	Chang‐Tai Hsieh, Peter J. Klenow, Ishan Nath
8	2021	Innovation: Market Failures and Public Policies ↗ This chapter is closely related because it surveys the economics of innovation, including market failures, policy responses, and recent work on the diffusion of inventions. While it is broader than worker mobility specifically, its discussion of diffusion and innovation policy is directly relevant to understanding how frictions and institutions shape knowledge spillovers and technology transfer. This is an invited chapter for the forthcoming Volume 4 of the Handbook of Industrial Organization. We summarize the state of the literature on the economics of innovation and highlight open policy questions. We first articulate the key market failures in markets for innovation, and then discuss how both scientific norms and market-oriented policies help overcome those market failures. We close by discussing recent work on the diffusion of inventions as well as on the links between innovation and inequality.	Kevin Bryan, Heidi Williams
8	2010	JOB COMPETITION, CROWDING OUT, AND UNEMPLOYMENT FLUCTUATIONS ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies search frictions, on-the-job search, and how skilled workers compete with less-skilled workers for jobs, which maps well to your interest in labor market frictions and worker mobility. Its focus is macro unemployment fluctuations rather than knowledge diffusion or technology transfer, but the crowding-out mechanism and occupation switching are relevant for understanding how worker movement affects labor market outcomes. This paper attempts to determine the factors generating the persistence of unemployment over the business cycle. The observations show that the total unemployment rate is highly persistent, and that the persistence of the unemployment rate of unskilled workers is higher than that of skilled workers. To account for these observations, the paper develops a framework that features search frictions. Individuals are either high educated or low educated, and firms post two types of vacancies: the complex, which can be matched with the high educated, and the simple, which can be matched with the high and the low educated. On-the-job search for a complex occupation is undertaken by the high...	Sherif Khalifa
8	2020	Skilled Labor Mobility and Firm Value: Evidence from Green Card Allocations ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how mobility frictions for skilled workers affect firms, a central mechanism in your project on labor mobility and knowledge diffusion. While the abstract emphasizes firm value, labor costs, and adjustment frictions rather than direct technology spillovers or innovation outcomes, it is highly relevant for understanding how constraints on skilled-worker movement shape firm incentives and outcomes. This paper studies how the labor market frictions of skilled workers affect corporate valuation. The analysis features immigrant workers’ mobility constraints imposed by the U.S. green card application process and exploits exogenous variations caused by imperfections in the current immigration system. The study finds that relaxing mobility constraints negatively influences firm value. This effect is stronger for firms with higher labor adjustment costs. Reductions in investments and increases in labor costs are channels through which labor mobility adversely affects firm value. The findings suggest that monopoly rent over skilled workers is an important economic determinant of corporate...	Mo Shen
8	2024	Migration barrier relaxation and entrepreneurship: Evidence from the hukou reform in China ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how relaxing migration barriers changes firm creation, labor allocation, and wages, which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape economic dynamism. While it focuses more on entrepreneurship than direct knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, the hukou reform evidence is useful for the project’s broader interest in how worker movement constraints affect firm dynamics and aggregate outcomes. We study the impact of relaxing internal migration barriers on entrepreneurship by exploiting China’s 2014 nationwide hukou reform and the administrative firm registry. Our difference-in-differences estimation finds that reformed counties experience sizable increases in entrepreneurial activities compared to control counties. The reform induces the creation of firms with a smaller scale and a lower likelihood of survival, indicating moderate expansions in labor demand. Migrant workers’ wages decline and entrepreneurial activities improve most in labor-intensive industries, implying that increased labor supply serves as one underlying mechanism. Our findings highlight the important role that...	Xinyan Liu, Yunjiao Xu, Jian Zou
8	2013	Flight of the H-1b: Inter-Firm Mobility and Return Migration Patterns for Skilled Guest Workers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inter-firm mobility of highly skilled workers and how visa-related frictions shape their movement across firms and across countries. It is especially relevant for understanding how labor market restrictions affect the diffusion of knowledge through skilled-worker and inventor mobility, though it focuses more on migration and labor supply than on direct technology spillovers or innovation outcomes. Critics of the H-1B program for high-skilled workers argue that the program restricts immigrant job mobility and lacks a vehicle for adjusting the number of visas during a recession. We study the job mobility of highly-skilled Indian IT guest workers and provide new evidence on their inter-firm mobility and return migration patterns. We use a unique multi-year firm level dataset to show that, outside of the Great Recession, these workers are mobile and that lower paid guest workers are more likely than higher paid guest workers to separate to another firm in the U.S. We also analyze return migration decisions and find that low wage workers repatriate more than high wage workers, and that...	Briggs Depew, Peter Norlander, Todd Sørensen
8	2021	The impact of metropolitan technology on the non-metropolitan labour market: evidence from US patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patenting and technological progress in metropolitan areas affect labor markets in other regions through knowledge spillovers and brain drain, which is central to worker mobility and diffusion of technology. Although it focuses more on regional labor-market effects than on firm-level mobility frictions like non-competes or inventor movement, it is still highly relevant to understanding the direction and aggregate consequences of technology diffusion across places. While urban technology exerts a positive effect on rural development through knowledge spillovers, it also raises the competitive advantage of urban firms over rural firms in product market competition. Urban technology also affects the rural labour market through brain drain. Using US county-level data, we find a negative relationship between metropolitan patent counts and non-metropolitan labour market performance. Our basic calculation indicates that, between 2005 and 2015, metropolitan technological progress was associated with a relative loss of about 2.5 million non-metropolitan jobs.	Oudom Hean, Mark D. Partridge
8	2013	The Role of University Scientist Mobility for Industrial Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for transferring scientific knowledge into firms and directly measures how hiring university scientists affects innovation output. It is especially relevant to the project’s themes of knowledge diffusion, skilled worker movement, and firm-level absorptive capacity, though it focuses more on university-to-firm transfer than on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility policy. cientific knowledge is an important ingredient in the innovation process. Drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm and the literature on the relationship between science and technology, this paper scrutinizes the importance of university scientists mobility for firms innovative activities. Combining patent data and matched employer-employee data for Danish firms, we can track the labor mobility of R&D workers from 1999 to 2004. We find that new joiners contribute more than long-term employees to innovative activity in the focal firm. Among new firm recruits, we observe that newly hired former university researchers contribute more to innovative activity than newly hired recent...	Ann‐Kathrine Ejsing, Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, et al.
8	2017	Beyond ‘related variety’: how inflows of skills shape innovativeness in different industries ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inflows of skills through worker mobility affect firms’ innovativeness, which is central to knowledge diffusion across firms. It is especially relevant for understanding how the direction and quality of spillovers vary by industry and how labor mobility shapes learning benefits, though it is less focused on explicit frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. Building on recent evolutionary thinking, this paper focuses on inter-industry differences in the receptiveness of firms to inflows of skills from different domains of the external economy. The empirical analysis of innovation performance finds that firms’ dependences on recruiting outside their own industry domains were inversely related to the vibrancy of knowledge dynamics within them. Moreover, inflow distances that are ‘optimal’ from the perspective of learning are closer to manufacturing firms’ own industry domains, than they are to the domains of services firms. As a result, only low-tech manufacturing and technology-intensive services firms exhibit the receptiveness to inflows from...	Sverre J. Herstad
8	2020	The Moderating Effects of Firm's and Industrial Co-Inventive Networks on the Relationship Between R&D Employees’ Mobility and Firm Creativity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how R&D employee mobility affects firm creativity and innovation, directly linking worker movement to knowledge transfer and spillovers. It also examines how co-inventive networks condition the gains and losses from inward and outward mobility, which is highly relevant to understanding the frictions and organizational structures that shape knowledge diffusion. Knowledge is the primary factor for firm creativity that is mostly embedded in employees. Meanwhile, R&D employee mobility is quite frequently in high technology firms. This situation suggests a critical management task of firm creativity and innovation: how to retain the knowledge of the current R&D employee and benefit from the knowledge brought by new R&D employees to improve firm creativity. Based on extant studies which found that the collaboration network correlated with employees’ knowledge retention, knowledge flow, and cognitive lock-in this article proposed that the characteristics of a firm's co-inventive network and industrial co-inventive network moderate the influence of R&D...	Chaoying Tang, Gupeng Zhang
8	2022	Productivity gains from migration: Evidence from inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies high-skilled inventor migration and shows that mobility increases inventor productivity, which is directly relevant to knowledge diffusion through worker movement. It is especially useful for understanding how migration affects innovation outcomes, though it focuses more on productivity gains of migrants than on labor market frictions or firm-level diffusion mechanisms. This paper studies the relationship between migration and the productivity of high-skilled workers, as captured by inventors of international patent applications. Using machine learning techniques to uniquely identify inventors across patents, we are able to track the migration patterns of nearly one million individual inventors across countries. Migrant inventors account for more than nine percent of inventors in our sample. The econometric analysis seeks to explain the recurring finding in the literature that migrant inventors are more productive than non-migrant inventors. We find evidence that migrant inventors become about twenty-three percent more productive after having migrated. The...	Gabriele Pellegrino, Orion Penner, Étienne Piguet, et al.
8	2023	Do Firms Value Court Enforceability of Noncompete Agreements? A Revealed Preference Approach ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies non-compete enforceability, a key labor market friction that can shape worker mobility and thus the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Its evidence on how firms respond to changes in NCA enforceability speaks directly to how policy affects retention, hiring incentives, and the use of contractual tools to limit technology and skill spillovers. Do firms value court enforceability of their workers' noncompete agreements (NCAs)? We leverage a 2020 Washington law that made NCAs unenforceable for workers earning less than $100k per year. If firms value the ability to enforce NCAs in court, then they should give just-below threshold workers raises to reach the threshold, resulting in excess mass just above the threshold. Using administrative data, we find no evidence of bunching, even where efficiency arguments are most plausible. A survey of Washington employment attorneys suggests little bunching because firms rarely need to enforce NCAs and because firms can use other, less restrictive alternatives.	Takuya Hiraiwa, Michael Lipsitz, Evan Starr
8	2021	Noncompete Agreements and the Welfare of Consumers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies noncompete agreements, worker spin-offs, and the incentives for firms to invest in employees who may later move and diffuse knowledge. Although its focus is consumer welfare rather than economy-wide productivity or innovation, it speaks directly to how labor market frictions shape knowledge transfer and firm behavior. Employee spin-offs harm incumbent firms by increasing competition (benefiting consumers) and preventing firm owners from making beneficial investments in workers who may later spin off (harming consumers). We model noncompete agreements (NCAs) as solutions for the firm and analyze the resulting trade-off for consumers. We show that market structure and the nature of investment play large roles. Counterintuitively, increased investment benefits have the potential to harm consumers such that industries where firms value NCAs the most are those where harm is greater. Finally, we draw two analogies between NCAs and antitrust and show how those areas inform NCA policy. (JEL D42, D43, J41, K21...	Michael Lipsitz, Mark J. Tremblay
8	2018	Patent Disclosure ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how information about patents and technological innovations affects the managerial labor market and the transfer of private knowledge across firms. Its focus on DSM ties, barriers to information sharing, and reduced human capital value speaks directly to mechanisms of knowledge diffusion, though it is more about public disclosure substituting for private spillovers than about worker mobility itself. This paper studies whether and how firms’ enhanced public disclosures of patent filings can spill over to the managerial labor market. Consistent with these disclosures crowding out the demand for directors and senior managers’ (DSMs) private information, I find that their external employment opportunities deteriorate when firms disclose patent information more timely. This effect is more pronounced when the strategic value of the disclosed information is higher and when DSMs face fewer barriers to sharing information. Additionally, the decline in their human capital value is reflected in a diminished role in transferring timely information about technological innovations. Collectively...	Deepak Hegde, Kyle Herkenhoff, Chenqi Zhu
8	2011	Labor market rigidity and productivity growth in a model of innovation-driven growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market rigidity and active labor market policies affect innovation-driven growth, which speaks directly to the project’s interest in labor market frictions and their aggregate productivity consequences. While it does not focus on worker mobility across firms or non-compete enforcement, its emphasis on knowledge mismatch, job finding, and diffusion of innovation through labor markets makes it highly relevant background. Empirical studies investigating the relationship between productivity performance and labor market rigidity have generated a negative result. In this paper we try to provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical result. In doing so, we construct a no-shirking model of innovation-based growth and investigate the steady-state impact of a set of active labor market policies aimed at reducing labor market rigidity and knowledge mismatch generated by innovations. We find that, while enhancing job finding activity definitively improves the equilibrium growth-unemployment mix of the economy, reducing the knowledge mismatch of innovation through active measures is less effective in reducing...	Carmelo Pierpaolo Parello
8	2017	Bargaining with Renegotiation in Models with On-the-Job Search ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, wage renegotiation, and turnover, all of which are central labor-market frictions affecting worker mobility. While it is not directly about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its model is highly relevant for understanding how mobility costs and bargaining shape job transitions and potentially the transfer of skills and information across firms. This paper studies renegotiation in models with on-the-job search, with an application to minimum wages. My formulation nests earlier models in the literature as limit cases when the frequency of renegotiation goes to zero or infinity. The equilibrium wage distribution and the bargaining outcomes are unique. When there is a strong response of turnover to a wage increase, firms accept higher wages, which increases the share of the surplus captured by the worker. Turnover responds more to wages when marginally better job offers arrive more frequently, and when renegotiation occurs less frequently. A minimum wage increase leads to a higher density of jobs at the minimum wage. This can spread...	Axel Gottfries
8	2022	Employer Market Power in Silicon Valley ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a labor market friction—no-poaching agreements—that directly restricts worker mobility and helps shape how knowledge and talent can move across firms. While the focus is on wages and employer market power rather than technology diffusion per se, the Silicon Valley setting and the implications for retention and hiring make it highly relevant to understanding how mobility constraints affect innovation-related labor markets. Adam Smith alleged that employers often secretly combine to reduce labour earnings. This paper examines an important case of such behavior: no-poaching agreements through which information-technology companies agreed not to compete for each other’s workers. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous timing of a US Department of Justice investigation, I estimate the effects of these agreements using a difference-in-differences design. Data from Glassdoor permit the inclusion of rich employer- and job-level controls. On average the no-poaching agreements reduced salaries at colluding firms by 5.6%, consistent with considerable employer market power. Stock bonuses and job satisfaction were also...	Matthew Gibson
8	2008	Spinoffs and the Market for Ideas ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies spinoffs as a mechanism for transferring ideas and knowledge across firms, which is central to understanding how worker movement affects technology diffusion. Its focus is more on asymmetric information and firm growth dynamics than on labor market frictions like non-competes or search, but it is highly relevant for the broader link between mobility, innovation, and aggregate productivity. We present a theory of spino¤s in which the key ingredient is the originator's private information concerning the quality of his new idea.Because quality is privately observed, by the standard adverse-selection logic, the market can at best o¤er a price that re ‡ects the average quality of ideas sold.This gives the holders of above-average-quality ideas the incentive to spin o¤.We show that only workers with very good ideas decide to spin o¤, while workers with mediocre ideas sell them.Entrepreneurs of existing …rms pay a price for the ideas sold in the market that implies zero expected pro…ts for them.Hence, …rms'project selection is independent of …rm size, which, under some additional...	Satyajit Chatterjee, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg
8	2021	Proximity and Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from the Introduction of New Airline Routes ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a key mechanism in the project: how reduced travel frictions affect knowledge diffusion across firms and regions. Although it finds the main channel is not inventor mobility but cross-firm spillovers, the evidence on proximity, travel-time shocks, and knowledge flow is highly relevant for understanding how mobility costs shape technology diffusion and innovation. This paper studies the causal relationship between proximity and knowledge diffusion by exploiting sudden changes in travel time following the introduction of new flight routes. We find that decreasing travel time between U.S. cities by 20% increases knowledge flow by 0.5%, which corresponds to an increase of over 15,000 citations at the aggregate level. Importantly, this effect is driven mainly by the rise in knowledge spillovers across firm boundaries instead of through inventors’ mobility or firms’ spatial expansion. The effects are stronger in rapidly-evolving technological fields and city pairs with higher absorptive capacity, but are smaller during the age of the Internet, as...	John Bai, Jin Wang, Sifan Zhou
8	2023	Non-Compete Agreements in a Rigid Labour Market: The Case of Italy ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements as a labor-market friction that restricts worker mobility, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion and the movement of skilled labor. Its evidence on prevalence, enforceability, and wage effects in Italy is useful for assessing how mobility constraints shape firm behavior and the circulation of human capital, even though it focuses more on labor market regulation than on direct technology spillovers. IZA DP No. 16021 MARCH 2023 Non-compete Agreements in a Rigid Labour Market: The Case of Italy* Non-compete clauses (NCCs) limiting the mobility of workers have been found to be rather widespread in the US, a flexible labour market with large turnover rates and a limited coverage of collective bargaining. This paper explores the presence of such arrangements in a rigid labour market, with strict employment protection regulations by OECD standards and where all employees are, at least on paper, subject to collective bargaining. Based on a representative survey of employees in the private sector, an exam of collective agreements and case law, we find that in Italy i) collective agreements...	Tito Boeri, Andrea Garnero, Lorenzo Giovanni Luisetto
8	2007	FIRM INNOVATION: THE INFLUENCE OF R&D COOPERATION AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF HUMAN CAPITAL INPUTS This paper is closely related because it studies how human capital mobility across firms affects innovation, directly aligning with the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for knowledge diffusion. It also considers inter-firm cooperation and the geography of labor inputs, which are useful for understanding how labor market frictions and spatial patterns shape technology transfer and firm innovation. This paper investigates the role played by the geography of labor inputs in the promotion of innovation. Knowledge can be transferred between firms by inter-firm interactions and inter-firm cooperation. In addition, knowledge can also be transferred between firms by human capital mobility. In order to examine these issues we employ a unique innovation dataset from Finland. This dataset provides information about a firm's innovation performance along with information regarding the origins of a firm's recent labor acquisitions. The origins of the labor are defined according to both the industry and the region. Analyzing these data allows us to identify the different roles which the geography...	Jaakko Simonen, Philip McCann
8	2024	Opposing Firm-Level Responses to the China Shock: Output Competition versus Input Supply ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how trade-induced shocks affect firms’ employment and innovation, including patenting, which connects to broader questions about how firm-level conditions shape knowledge creation and diffusion. Although it does not center on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides important evidence on how competitive and input-supply environments alter innovation outcomes and firm adjustment. We decompose the “China shock” into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: an output shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, and an input supply shock affecting firms using inputs similar to the imported Chinese goods. Combining French accounting, customs, and patent information at the firm level, we show that the output shock is detrimental to firms’ sales, employment, and innovation. Moreover, this negative impact is concentrated in low-productivity firms. On the other hand, the impact of the input supply shock is reversed. (JEL D22, D24, F14, J23, L25, O31, O34)	Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Matthieu Lequien, et al.
8	2023	How Do Agglomeration Externalities and Workforce Skills Drive Innovation? Empirical Evidence from Italy ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how worker mobility, especially across regions and among workers with different skill overlaps, affects innovation outcomes. It also speaks to your project’s themes of knowledge diffusion and labor mobility frictions, though it focuses more on territorial agglomeration and skills complementarity than on specific frictions like non-competes or firm-level retention policies. Based on four research hypotheses, this paper investigates whether and how the propensity for innovation of a territory depends on (i) agglomeration externalities (specialisation vs. diversification); (ii) the interaction between skills complementarity (overlapped, unlinked, connected skills) and agglomeration externalities; (iii) inter-regional workers’ mobility; (iv) workers’ mobility in both intra- and inter-regional flows. Although these factors have been explored from a one-by-one perspective, there is little evidence of their joint actions on a location’s propensity for innovation. To propose new insights into how these factors work together, we perform the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM)...	Rosalia Castellano, Gaetano Musella, Gennaro Punzo
8	2024	Labor market reform as an external enabler of high-growth entrepreneurship: A multi-level institutional contingency perspective ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how reducing non-compete enforceability changes labor market frictions and affects high-growth entrepreneurship, which is directly relevant to worker mobility and the diffusion of knowledge through labor markets. It is especially useful for understanding how institutional changes can enable or constrain the movement of skilled labor and the resulting innovation and firm-creation outcomes, though it focuses more on entrepreneurship than on direct technology diffusion or inventor mobility. We investigate the impact of friction-reducing labor market reforms on regional high-growth entrepreneurship (HGE) through the effects of reduced legal enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs). We draw on new institutional economic theory and the external enablement framework, with insights from the theory of market-preserving federalism, to explore how these reforms enable (disable) HGE within the context of other, concurrent institutional changes at different governance levels. We assemble a novel multi-level longitudinal dataset and employ staggered difference-in-differences estimation to assess causal effects. Our findings suggest that while reducing the enforceability of NCAs can...	Daniel Bennett, Gary A. Wagner, Michael Araki
8	2016	Search capital ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, worker mobility, and employer recall as mechanisms shaping job transitions, which are central to how knowledge and opportunities move across firms. While it does not focus directly on technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its equilibrium model of search frictions and job-to-job moves is highly relevant for understanding labor market frictions that affect worker movement and the transmission of information. This paper first documents the extent of return employment: workers returning to employers they worked for previously within the same employment spell. Employer returns are typically involuntary and lead to lower earnings. To understand these features, the paper then develops an equilibrium model of worker recall and on-the-job search in which job seekers hold onto information they acquire about job opportunities as insurance in the event of a job destruction shock. Allowing workers to recall contacts increases the probability of a jobto-job transition with the number of jobs previously held during the employment spell while the probability of an job-to-unemployment transition decreases...	Carlos Carrillo‐Tudela, Eric Smith
8	2012	Wages and Health Worker Retention in Ghana : Evidence from Public Sector Wage Reforms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how wages affect the retention and mobility of skilled workers, a core mechanism in your project. Although it focuses on public-sector health workers rather than firms, inventors, or direct knowledge diffusion, the evidence on reducing migration through higher pay is highly relevant to labor mobility frictions and the movement of talent across borders. Can governments in developing countries \n retain skilled health workers by raising public sector \n wages? The author investigates this question using sudden, \n policy-induced wage variation, in which the Government of \n Ghana restructured the pay scale for government health \n workers. The author find that a ten percent increase in \n wages decreases annual attrition from the public payroll by \n 1.5 percentage points (from a mean of eight percentage \n points) among 20-35 year-old workers from professions that \n tend to migrate. As a result, the ten-year survival \n probability for these health workers increases from 0.43 to \n 0.52. The effects are concentrated among these young \n...	James Antwi, David Phillips
8	2011	Optimal Wage Policy with Endogenous Search Intensity This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, counteroffers, quitting, and how firms use wage policies to influence worker mobility, all of which are central to labor market frictions affecting knowledge diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how firms’ retention and wage-setting decisions shape worker movement across firms, though it does not directly focus on technology transfer or inventor mobility. Firms that counter outside offers face the moral hazard problem of rent seeking on-the-job search. When choosing a wage policy firms have to trade off the loss due to this moral hazard problem with the gain from a lower quitting probability. Given that step contracts provide the optimal wage tenure profile to reduce the quitting rate for all wage policies, the value of employment increases with tenure. Thus, firms can condition their wage policy on the value of employment a competing firm will offer. Since low productivity firms do not gain from matching an outside offer, they never counter an outside offers. High productivity firms, however, generally match outside offers of less...	Christian Holzner
8	2021	Cyclical Worker Flows: Cleansing vs. Sullying ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility across firms as a mechanism for productivity growth and technology/knowledge reallocation, using linked employer-employee data. It directly speaks to how labor market conditions shape the direction and quality of worker flows, though it is more about cyclicality and productivity sorting than about explicit knowledge diffusion or policy frictions like non-competes. Do recessions speed up or impede productivity-enhancing reallocation? To investigate this question, we use U.S. linked employer-employee data to examine how worker flows contribute to productivity growth over the business cycle. We find that in expansions high-productivity firms grow faster primarily by hiring workers away from lower-productivity firms. The rate at which job-to-job flows move workers up the productivity ladder is highly procyclical. Productivity growth slows during recessions when this job ladder collapses. In contrast, flows into nonemployment from low productivity firms disproportionately increase in recessions, which leads to an increase in productivity growth. We thus...	John Haltiwanger, Henry R. Hyatt, Erika McEntarfer, et al.
8	2025	From perfect to practical: Partial identification methods for causal inference in strategic management research ↗ This paper is closely related because its empirical example directly studies how first patents affect inventor mobility, which is central to understanding worker movement as a channel for knowledge diffusion. More broadly, it contributes methodological tools for causal inference in settings with imperfect identification, which can be useful for research on mobility frictions, spillovers, and innovation policy. Abstract Research Summary Strategy and management scholars have increasingly used difference‐in‐differences (DD) and instrumental variables (IV) designs to identify causal effects. These methods rely on untestable identifying assumptions to interpret the results as causal. “partial identification” techniques allow researchers to draw causal inferences from imperfect identification strategies by quantifying how results change with the severity of a violation of the identifying assumption. We explain how these tools work in the context of DD and IV designs, provide practical guidance to apply them, and illustrate their use in an empirical example that investigates how first patents affect...	Justin Frake, Anthony Gibbs, Brent Goldfarb, et al.
8	2001	On the Importance of Geographic and Technological Proximity for R&D Spillovers: An Empirical Investigation ↗ [Title only] This title looks highly relevant because it directly studies R&D spillovers, which are central to knowledge diffusion and productivity effects in innovation. The focus on geographic and technological proximity suggests it may examine the channels and frictions through which knowledge moves across firms, though it is less explicitly about worker mobility or labor market frictions than some papers in the project. No abstract available.	Michael J. Orlando
8	2021	Technology Transfer and Early Industrial Development: Evidence From the Sino-Soviet Alliance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through know-how transfer, especially via training of engineers and production supervisors, which maps directly to worker-based knowledge transmission. It also examines long-run spillovers, domestic innovation, and firm-level reallocation effects from transferred expertise, though it is less about labor market frictions or worker mobility per se. This paper studies the long-term effects of technology and know-how transfers on structural transformations. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union supported the construction of 156 Projects, largescale capital-intensive industrial clusters in China, and sponsored a physical capital transfer providing state-of-the-art machinery and equipment; and a know-how transfer through training for engineers and production supervisors. We use newly-assembled data that follow these plants for over four decades, combined with natural variation in the transfers they eventually received. We find that know-how transfer had permanent effects on output quantity and quality, increased domestic technology development...	Michela Giorcelli, Bo Li
8	2013	The Role of University Scientist Mobility for Industrial Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies scientist mobility as a channel for transferring knowledge from universities to firms and measures the effect on industrial innovation. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on skilled-worker mobility, human capital transfer, and how firm hiring/absorptive capacity shapes the diffusion and quality of knowledge spillovers. cientific knowledge is an important ingredient in the innovation process. Drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm and the literature on the relationship between science and technology, this paper scrutinizes the importance of university scientists mobility for firms innovative activities. Combining patent data and matched employer-employee data for Danish firms, we can track the labor mobility of R&D workers from 1999 to 2004. We find that new joiners contribute more than long-term employees to innovative activity in the focal firm. Among new firm recruits, we observe that newly hired former university researchers contribute more to innovative activity than newly hired recent...	Ann‐Kathrine Ejsing, Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, et al.
8	—	This paper is closely related because it directly studies how worker mobility maps into firms’ innovative activity, with evidence that movers from innovative firms generate stronger knowledge-transfer effects. It also speaks to the project’s core themes by showing positive feedback to both the receiving and former employer, highlighting labor mobility as a mechanism for technology diffusion and innovation spillovers. We study the mapping between labor mobility and industrial innovative activity for the population of R&D active Danish firms observed between 1999 and 2004.Our study documents a positive relationship between the number of workers who join a firm and the firm's innovative activity.This relationship is stronger if workers join from innovative firms.We also find evidence for positive feedback from workers who leave for an innovative firm, presumably because the worker who left stays in contact with their former colleagues.This implies that the positive feedback ("social network effects") that has been found by other studies not only exists but even outweighs the disruption and loss of...	Ulrich Kaiser, Hans Christian Kongsted, Thomas Rønde
8	2021	The joint effects of individual and firm level knowledge attributes on inventor mobility to entrepreneurial and established firms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism of knowledge reallocation across firms, which is central to understanding technology diffusion through labor movement. It also highlights how firm knowledge environments and individual inventor attributes shape whether knowledge exits to entrepreneurial or established firms, making it relevant to mobility frictions, retention, and the direction of spillovers. We consider how inventor- and firm-level knowledge characteristics co-determine an inventor's propensity of joining another firm. Specifically, we examine the influence of knowledge impact, knowledge specialization, core status within the firm, and knowledge complexity on an inventor's decision to depart the firm and join either an entrepreneurial venture or another established firm. We then examine how the incumbent firm's knowledge complexity moderates the relationship between individual knowledge attributes and the inventor's decision to join another firm. Our study demonstrates that individual knowledge attributes distinctively interact with the inventor's current firm-knowledge...	Richard B. Scoresby, Haemin Park
8	2024	Flow of Ideas: Economic Societies and the Rise of Useful Knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how institutions reduced the costs of accessing useful knowledge and how this affected innovation, skilled-worker density, and patenting across regions. Its evidence on localized knowledge spillovers, agglomeration, and the spatial diffusion and direction of technological progress maps well to the project’s focus on mechanisms of knowledge diffusion, though it does not directly analyze worker mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs. Abstract Economic societies emerged during the late eighteenth century. We argue that these institutions reduced the costs of accessing useful knowledge by adopting, producing and diffusing new ideas. Combining location information for the universe of 3,300 members across active economic societies in Germany with those of patent holders and World’s Fair exhibitors, we show that regions with more members were more innovative in the late nineteenth century. This long-lasting effect of societies arguably arose through agglomeration economies and localised knowledge spillovers. To support this claim, we provide evidence suggesting an immediate increase in manufacturing, an earlier establishment...	Francesco Cinnirella, Erik Hornung, Julius Koschnick
8	2024	From Adoption to Innovation: State-Dependent Technology Policy in Developing Countries ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion, knowledge spillovers, and the transition from foreign adoption to domestic innovation using worker- and firm-level productivity dynamics. While it does not focus primarily on worker mobility or labor market frictions like non-competes, its model of adoption, spillovers, and policy design is highly relevant to understanding aggregate productivity and growth impacts of knowledge transfer. Should policymakers in developing countries prioritize foreign technology adoption over domestic innovation? How might this depend on development stages? Using historical technology transfer data from Korea, we find that greater productivity gaps with foreign firms correlate with faster productivity growth after adoption, despite lower fees. Furthermore, non-adopters increased patent citations to foreign sellers, suggesting knowledge spillovers. Motivated by these findings, we build a two-country growth model with innovation and adoption. As the gaps narrow, productivity gains and spillovers from adoption diminish and foreign sellers strategically raise fees due to intensified competition...	Jaedo Choi
8	2014	Dynamic Selection: An Idea Flows Theory of Entry, Trade and Growth This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion across firms through learning from incumbents, and how market structure affects the rate and direction of that diffusion. Its focus is on entry, trade, and endogenous growth rather than worker mobility specifically, so it is not a direct paper on labor-market frictions or inventor movement, but it is very relevant for the broader mechanism of knowledge spillovers and diffusion. This paper develops an idea flows theory of trade and growth with heterogeneous firms. New firms learn from incumbent firms, but the diffusion technology ensures entrants learn not only from frontier technologies, but from the entire technology distribution. By shifting the productivity distribution upwards, selection on productivity causes technology diffusion and this complementarity generates endogenous growth without scale effects. On the balanced growth path, the productivity distribution is a traveling wave with an increasing lower bound. Growth of the lower bound causes dynamic selection. Free entry mandates that trade liberalization increases the rates of technology diffusion and...	Thomas Sampson
8	2015	Globalization, Worker Mobility and Wage Inequality ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a link between worker mobility and labor-market outcomes, which is directly relevant to understanding how movement of workers shapes knowledge diffusion and firm adjustment. The globalization angle may add broader trade and offshoring forces, and while wage inequality is not the core of the project, it often interacts with mobility frictions, skill transfer, and sorting across firms. No abstract available.	Damir Stijepic
8	2022	Managers as knowledge carriers – Explaining firms’ internationalization success with manager mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies managers as carriers of knowledge across firms, with mobility transmitting export-market experience and affecting firm performance. Its focus is on manager mobility, learning, and on-the-job search as mechanisms of knowledge diffusion, which aligns well with the project’s emphasis on labor mobility frictions and spillovers, though it is more about internationalization than broad technology diffusion or innovation. How does “what managers know” affect firm performance on international markets? This question is of considerable importance in the international economic literature. Answering it will be key for comprehending the way firms’ varying performance on international markets is shaped by the human factor. This paper proposes managerial mobility as an integral part of such an answer. Catering products to an international customer base entails a learning process, which, to a large degree, stems from the experience of doing it. Therefore, different employers immensely contend for managers’ highly valuable export experience. As managers can accept better and better positions from several offers, they...	Philipp Meinen, Pierpaolo Parrotta, Davide Sala, et al.
8	2021	Discrimination and Monopsony Power ↗ This paper is closely related because it models worker movement between jobs, monetary frictions in job transitions, and firm monopsony power, all of which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape mobility and wage setting. While it is focused on discrimination rather than knowledge diffusion, the framework is highly relevant for studying how impeded mobility affects hiring, retention, and the broader transmission of skills and information across firms. Wage inequalities between identical workers of different race, ethnicity, and gender are a persistent feature of labor markets. However, most labor market models either ignore important empirical evidence or focus very narrowly on specific labor market dynamics. To better understand such wage differences, we create a labor market model that integrates firm competition for workers, employee movement between jobs in response to market signals, potential monetary frictions in the job transition process, and workers' collective action which is a function of government support. Our model shows that because of gender- and race-specific historical and social outcomes, like the relatively lower...	Mark Stelzner, Kate Bahn
8	2022	Monopsony Makes Firms Not Only Small But Also Unproductive: Why East Germany Has Not Converged ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market monopsony and mobility frictions affect firm size, hiring, and productivity, which are central to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and aggregate productivity. While it does not directly analyze worker-driven knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its mechanism linking labor market power to underinvestment in business networks and lower productivity is highly relevant to understanding how restrictions on labor mobility shape firm dynamics and growth. When employers face a trade-off between being large and paying low wages—and in this sense have monopsony power—some productive employers decide against building large business networks, forgo sales, and remain small. These decisions have adverse consequences for aggregate labour productivity. Using high-quality administrative data from Germany, we document that East German plants (compared to West German ones) face steeper size-wage curves, invest less in their business networks, remain smaller, and are less productive. A model with labour market monopsony, product market power, and business network investments matching these features of the data predicts a 10% lower aggregate labour...	Rüdiger Bachmann, Christian Bayer, Heiko Stueber, et al.
8	2008	Labor Market Friction, Firm Heterogeneity, and Aggregate Employment and Productivity This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market frictions and job-to-job mobility shape aggregate employment and productivity, which is central to understanding worker movement and its economy-wide effects. While it does not focus specifically on knowledge diffusion, inventors, or non-compete policies, its search-and-matching framework and firm heterogeneity are highly relevant for modeling how mobility frictions affect firm dynamics and growth. The paper is based on a synthesis of a variety version of thefirm life cycle model developed by Klette and Kortum (2004) and an equilibrium searchmodel of the labor market with job to job flows introducted by Mortensen (2003). In the construction, a continuum of intermediate product and servicevarieties are produced with labor that serve as inputs in the production of afinal good. Intermediate goods producers generally differ with respect to their productivity. New firms enter and continuingfirmsgrowbydevelopingnewproductvarieties. Thetimerequiredtomatch workers and jobs in the model depends on the total search effort ofworkers and the total number of vacancies. Workers can search both...	Rasmus Lentz, Dale T. Mortensen
8	2016	Global Collaborative Patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies cross-border inventor mobility within firms as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion and technology transfer. It also links inventor team composition, foreign expansion, and weak IP protection to how knowledge is created and exploited, which maps directly to the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge spillovers. We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new foreign region for innovative work, especially in settings where intellectual property protection is weak. We also connect collaborative patents to the ethnic composition of the firm’s U.S. inventors and cross-border mobility of inventors within the firm. The inventor team composition has important consequences for how the new knowledge is exploited within and outside of the firm.	Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr
8	2022	Trust and Contracts: Empirical Evidence ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how contractual frictions and trust shape the inclusion of non-compete, confidentiality, and action-restricting clauses, which are directly relevant to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. While it is not primarily about inventors or aggregate productivity effects, it offers useful evidence on how firms use contracts to limit the transfer of information and restrict mobility. Trust between parties should drive the negotiation and design of contract: if parties did not trust each others' reaction to unplanned events, they might agree to pay higher costs of negotiation to complete contracts. Using a unique sample of U.S. principal-agent consulting contracts and a negative shock to trust between parties staggered across space and over time, we find that lower trust increases contract completeness. Not only contract complexity but also the verifiable states of the world contracts cover increase after a drop in trust. The results hold for several text-analysis-based measures of completeness and do not arise when agents are also principals (shareholders) or in other...	Francesco D’Acunto, Jin Xie, Jiaquan Yao
8	2023	An Anatomy of Monopsony: Search Frictions, Amenities and Bargaining in Concentrated Markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies search frictions, labor market concentration, and worker-firm bargaining power as determinants of monopsony power, wages, and job flows. While it is not directly about technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its mechanisms for worker movement and firm hiring/retention are highly relevant for understanding how labor market frictions shape the transfer of human capital and knowledge across firms. We contribute a theory in which three channels interact to determine the degree of monopsony power and therefore the markdown of a worker ’ s spot wage relative to her marginal product: (1) heterogeneity in worker-ﬁ rm-speci ﬁ c preferences (nonwage amenities), (2) ﬁ rm granularity, and (3) off-and on-the-job search frictions. We use Norwegian data to discipline each channel and then reproduce new reduced-form empirical relationships between market concentration, job ﬂ ows, wages and wage inequality. In doing so we provide a novel method for clustering occupations into local labor markets. Our main exercise quanti ﬁ es the contribution of each channel to income inequality and wage...	David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, Andreas Kostøl, et al.
8	2023	Merger Guidelines for the Labor Market ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market monopsony, worker wages, and employment effects of mergers, which are important frictions in the movement of workers across firms. Although it does not focus on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility directly, its framework is highly relevant for understanding how labor market structure can affect worker reallocation and thus the transmission of skills and ideas. While the labor market implications of mergers have historically been ignored, recent actions by the Department of Justice (DOJ) place buyer market power (i.e., monopsony) at the forefront of antitrust policy.We develop a theory of multi-plant ownership and monopsony to help guide this new policy focus.We estimate the model using U.S. Census data and demonstrate the model's ability to replicate empirically documented paths of employment and wages following mergers.We then simulate a representative set of U.S. mergers in order to evaluate merger review thresholds.Our main exercise applies the DOJ and FTC's product market concentration thresholds to local labor markets.Assuming mergers...	David Berger, Thomas Hasenzagl, Kyle Herkenhoff, et al.
8	2023	Knowledge catalysts: The role of generalist incumbents in post-hiring knowledge integration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility generates post-hiring knowledge diffusion within firms, which is central to the project’s focus on labor-driven technology transfer. It also speaks to firm-level hiring and human-capital composition as determinants of whether mobility actually translates into innovation and knowledge spillovers, though it is more about internal integration than labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. Learning-by-hiring is deemed an important channel through which firms tap into external knowledge, yet recent research shows that, post-hiring, incumbent inventors make only limited use of hiring-brought knowledge. This study suggests the mix of generalists among hiring firm incumbent inventors as an important factor promoting the post-hiring use of hired inventors' pre-hire knowledge by incumbents, especially in entering unexperienced knowledge domains. Exploiting a series of U. S. State R&D tax credits policies as an exogenous shock to the composition of hiring firm inventors, we find evidence supportive of our propositions. Our study contributes to the learning-by-hiring literature by...	Di Tong, Jeongsik Jay Lee
8	2021	Microfoundations of R&D Alliance Formation: The Interplay of Scientist Mobility and the Cooperative Context of Collaboration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies scientist mobility as a mechanism that facilitates R&D collaboration and knowledge exchange between firms, directly matching your interest in worker movement as a diffusion channel. Its focus is on alliance formation rather than productivity, mobility frictions, or policy restrictions like non-competes, so it is somewhat adjacent to the core question rather than fully central. Alliance research emphasizes that firms can access research and development (R&D) collaboration opportunities when they enjoy relational or geographic embeddedness with potential partners. However, how can firms that are not embedded with prospective partners establish alliances? We emphasize the microfoundations of R&D alliance formation and propose that scientist mobility is an important substitutive mechanism that helps foster collaboration opportunities between firms that are poorly embedded. Specifically, we posit and show that in high-tech industries, scientist mobility is more facilitative for R&D alliance formation when potential partners lack relational ties between them or are not...	Ramakrishna Devarakonda, Stevo Pavićević, Jeffrey J. Reuer
8	2012	Is Knowledge Trapped Inside the Ivory Tower? Technology Spawning and the Genesis of New Science-Based Inventions ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of how knowledge created in academia escapes into the broader economy through technology spawning and the creation of new science-based inventions, which is closely related to knowledge diffusion and worker/inventor mobility themes. It may focus more on university spillovers and invention formation than on labor market frictions like non-competes or search, but it is still highly relevant to technology transfer and innovation spillovers. No abstract available.	Michaal Bikard
8	2019	Do Venture Capitalists Stifle Competition? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how ownership and funding relationships shape the direction and efficiency of innovation across firms, which is central to understanding knowledge creation and diffusion in the economy. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its evidence on redirecting R&D and reducing duplication in patent races speaks to the broader mechanisms through which firms coordinate innovation and affect technological progress. How does common ownership affect innovation? We study this question using project-level data on pharmaceutical startups and their venture capital (VC) investors. We find that common VC ownership reduces duplication of R&D in patent races. Specifically, common ownership leads VCs to shut down lagging drug projects, withhold funding from lagging startups, and redirect those startups' innovation. These results support theories dating back to Loury (1979): By coordinating R&D efforts across firms in a patent race, a common owner can reduce excess R&D. Consistent with common ownership improving innovation efficiency, common ownership rates are positively correlated with the ratio of R&D output...	Xuelin Li, Tong Liu, Lucian A. Taylor	Other
8	2023	Global Innovation and Knowledge Diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies global knowledge diffusion as a mechanism linking innovation and productivity across countries, which is central to understanding how ideas spread through economic networks. However, it is primarily a trade and aggregate productivity model rather than a worker-mobility or labor-frictions paper, so it speaks to the project more through diffusion outcomes than through the specific micro mechanisms of non-competes, search frictions, or inventor movement. We develop a Ricardian model of trade where countries innovate ideas that diffuse globally. Our key result provides necessary and sufficient conditions for innovation and diffusion to generate max-stable Fréchet productivity, linking generalized extreme value expenditure to knowledge flows. Innovation makes a country technologically distinct, reducing its substitutability with other countries. In contrast, diffusion generates technological similarity, increasing head-to-head competition and substitutability. In an innovation-only model where countries do not share ideas, productivities are independent across countries and expenditure is CES. Consequently, departures from CES reveal...	Nelson Lind, Natalia Ramondo
8	2022	Development Zones and Firm Innovation: Evidence from Shanghai ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies firm innovation and explicitly documents knowledge spillovers across development-zone boundaries, which speaks directly to technology diffusion. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, the spillover mechanism and use of patents/R&D make it useful for understanding how local environments shape knowledge transmission and innovation outcomes. A majority of Chinese high-tech firms were founded in development zones established by the Chinese government. It is necessary to identify the impacts of development zones on firms’ innovation (hereinafter referred to as “innovation effects”) as well as the possible knowledge spillover of development zones. Different types of zones, due to their different administrative levels and original purposes of establishment, may have different innovation effects. In this paper, the innovation effects of the Shanghai development zones are identified by using the geographic range of Shanghai development zones as well as geographic coordinates, patents, and research and development (R&D) data of...	Hanzhen OUYANG, Chang LI, Guangwei Liu, et al.
8	2015	Team-Specific Capital and Innovation ↗ [Title only] This title is likely highly relevant because team-specific capital can shape how knowledge is accumulated, retained, and transferred within and across firms, which is central to worker mobility and diffusion. The innovation angle suggests it may examine how firm or team relationships affect inventive output, though it may focus more on internal organization than on explicit labor-market frictions like non-competes or search. No abstract available.	Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, Alex Bell	Other
8	2006	Chapter 12 The Empirical Content of the Job Search Model: Labor Mobility and Wage Distributions in Europe and the U.S. ↗ [Title only] This chapter appears highly relevant because it focuses on the job search model, labor mobility, and wage distributions, which are central to understanding worker movement and search frictions in knowledge diffusion. Even if it is not explicitly about inventor mobility or technology spillovers, the emphasis on cross-country labor mobility makes it likely to offer useful evidence for how frictions shape worker flows and firm outcomes. No abstract available.	Grégory Jolivet, Fabien Postel‐Vinay, Jean‐Marc Robin
8	2022	Noncompete agreements, bargaining, and wages: evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies noncompete agreements, a key labor market friction in the project, and how they affect worker wages and bargaining. Although it focuses more on wage outcomes than technology diffusion or innovation directly, its evidence on NCA enforcement and heterogeneous labor-market effects is highly relevant to understanding worker mobility restrictions and their economic consequences. We examine the use of noncompete agreements (NCAs) and their relationship with wage bargaining and wage outcomes using new data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. NCAs cover 18 percent of the workers in our sample, and adoption patterns are broadly consistent with prior research. The NCA–wage correlation is positive and highly sensitive to controls for demographics and job characteristics, suggesting selection into NCAs causes positive bias in the estimates. While it is not obvious what the baseline level of the NCA–wage differential is, some heterogeneous effects are more stable: the NCA–wage differential is lower for workers who do not bargain over wages, have less...	Donna S. Rothstein, Evan Starr
8	2023	Firm Dynamics and Random Search over the Business Cycle ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies random search, on-the-job search, firm dynamics, and worker reallocation, all of which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape movement across firms. It does not focus explicitly on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, but its framework is highly relevant for analyzing how hiring, retention, and mobility costs affect the allocation of workers across firms over the business cycle. I build a tractable random search model with firm dynamics, on-the-job search, and aggregate shocks. Multi-worker firms make recruitment decisions, choose whether to enter or exit the market, and design wage contracts. Tractability is obtained by showing that, under a set of assumptions on the recruitment technology, the decisions of workers and firms can be expressed in terms of the firms’ current productivity. I introduce a numerical solution method to accommodate aggregate shocks in this environment and show that the model can replicate salient features of both firm-level data on productivity and employment and aggregate time series describing the business cycle. I use this framework to...	Richard Audoly
8	2005	Do Workers Benefit from Industrial Agglomeration This paper is closely related because it studies how industrial agglomeration affects worker mobility across jobs, employment transitions, and entrepreneurship, all of which are central to understanding labor-market channels of knowledge diffusion. While it does not directly analyze non-competes or inventor mobility, its evidence on cluster-driven mobility and worker outcomes provides useful context for how geographic concentration may facilitate or reshape technology spillovers. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the advantages accruing to workers in industrial clusters. Using a unique data set based on the Cluster Mapping Project of the Italian National Statistical Institute, we examine whether industry agglomeration leads to wage and labor mobility differentials. We estimate complete Mincerian wage equations, investigating whether returns to seniority and education are a possible source of differentiation. We find that working in an industrial cluster reduces the returns to education, does not affect the returns to seniority, and does not provide average wage premia. On the other hand, industrial agglomeration positively affects the likelihood of...	Guido de Blasio, Sabrina Lucia Di Addario
8	2012	Better Workers Move to Better Firms: A Simple Test to Identify Sorting ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility across firms and uses that mobility to infer sorting patterns between worker types and firm types, which is central to understanding how labor reallocation shapes knowledge diffusion. Although it does not directly analyze technology transfer, non-competes, or innovation outcomes, its framework on assortative matching and movement to better firms is highly relevant to worker-driven diffusion and firm dynamics. We propose a simple test that uses information on workers' mobility, wages and firms' profits to identify the sign and strength of assortative matching. The basic intuition underlying our empirical strategy is that, in the presence of positive (negative) assortative matching, good workers are more (less) likely to move to better firms than bad workers. Assuming that agents' payoffs are increasing in their own types, our test exploits within-firm variation on wages to rank workers by their types and firm profits to rank firms. We use a panel data set that combines social security earnings records for workers in the Veneto region of Italy with detailed balance-sheet data for firms. We find...	Cristian Bartolucci, Francesco Devicienti
8	2019	Platform skills and the value of new hires in the software industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for transferring platform-specific human capital across firms, generating measurable performance gains for recipient firms. It also speaks to knowledge diffusion through hiring and shows how innovation intensity and R&D shape the value of inflows, though it is more about platform skills in software than about labor market frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes. Abstract The software industry is unique in terms of its “platform economics” where many firms build their products based on dominant software platforms. Hiring workers from firms with high platform knowledge may thus create externalities for the recipient software firms. Yet, while prior studies have shown that hiring IT workers creates value for recipient firms, the sources of such hiring and the characteristics of recipients that increase value in the software industry are unclear. This paper contributes to the literature by uncovering that the value created through hiring IT workers in the software industry stems largely from firms that are high in platform human capital. Using a large...	Chunmian Ge, Ke‐Wei Huang, Atreyi Kankanhalli
8	2020	Wage Gains from Foreign Ownership: \nEvidence from Linked \nEmployer–Employee Data This paper is highly relevant because it studies how worker movement between multinational and domestic firms transfers knowledge and raises wages, which is directly tied to labor mobility as a channel for technology diffusion. Its evidence on spillover effects from ex-MNE peers and transferable knowledge through turnover speaks to the project’s core themes of worker mobility, knowledge spillovers, and firm-level wage/retention dynamics. Abstract We compare the wages of skilled workers in multinational enterprises (MNEs) versus domestic firms, the earnings of domestic firm workers with past, future and no MNE experience, and estimate how the presence of ex-MNE peers affects the wages of domestic firm employees. The analysis relies on monthly panel data covering half of the Hungarian population and their employers in 2003–2011. We identify the returns to MNE experience from changes of ownership, wages paid by new firms of different ownership, and the movement of workers between enterprises. We find high contemporaneous and lagged returns to MNE experience and significant spillover effects. Foreign acquisition has a moderate...	János Köllő, István Boza, László Balázsi
8	2021	Technology Transfer and Early Industrial Development: Evidence from the Sino-Soviet Alliance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how know-how transfer and training of engineers and technicians affect productivity, technology upgrading, and spillovers across plants. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it directly addresses technology diffusion through human capital transfer and the persistence of knowledge spillovers. Abstract This paper studies the long-term effects of technology and know-how transfers on structural transformations. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union supported the construction of the 156 Projects, which were large-scale, capital-intensive industrial clusters in China. These projects included a technology transfer, consisting of state-of-the-art Soviet machinery and equipment, and a know-how transfer, via the training of Chinese engineers, production supervisors, and high-skilled technicians by Soviet experts. We use newly assembled data that follow steel plants for over four decades, and we exploit natural variation in the transfers they eventually received. We find that, while production...	Michela Giorcelli, Bo Li
8	2023	Inventions, commercialization strategies, and knowledge spillovers in SMEs ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventions diffuse through commercialization choices and directly measures knowledge spillovers, which aligns with the project’s focus on technology transfer and diffusion mechanisms. While it does not center on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its evidence on licensing, new ventures, and firm-based commercialization speaks to how knowledge moves across organizational boundaries. Despite the comprehensive previous research on different aspects of inventions and externalities spanning both the micro- and macrolevels, no prior studies have, to our knowledge, examined the relationship between the commercialization strategies of inventions/patents and social knowledge spillovers. To bridge this gap in the literature, we examine how such spillovers, measured as forward citations, covary with four commercialization modes: (1) setting up a new firm, (2) commercialization within an existing firm where the inventor either is employed or (3) has an ownership stake, and (4) licensing/selling patents to other firms. Alternatively, an inventor may refrain from commercialization...	Pontus Braunerhjelm, Roger Svensson
8	2022	Learning-by-hiring: How do rival firms learn from focal firm's hiring ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how scientist mobility transmits knowledge across firms and affects rival firms’ innovation responses, which is central to understanding worker-driven technology diffusion. It also speaks to how the context of mobility shapes spillovers and competitive dynamics, though it focuses more on patent citation responses than on broader labor market frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. Previous studies provide evidence of learning from the mobility of scientists for the source and the hiring firms. However, we have a limited understanding of the competitive implications of such inter-firm mobility and associated learnings. Using a difference–in–difference approach on matched patents in the semiconductor industry in 1981–2010, we find that mobile scientists' patents receive more citations from rival firms after the mobility vis-à-vis before the mobility and vis-à-vis other similar patents. We conclude that rival firms respond to mobilities across other firms by attributing more attention to mobile scientists. Furthermore, the context of the mobility can determine the...	Mayank Varshney
8	2024	Types of common R&D partners and knowledge leakage to rivals: The role of IP litigation reputation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion across firms and how a legal/frictions mechanism—IP litigation reputation—affects leakage through collaboration networks. Although it focuses on R&D partnerships rather than worker mobility, inventor spillovers, or labor market frictions, it speaks directly to the direction and containment of knowledge flows among rival firms. We argue that knowledge leakage may occur between rival firms through indirect ties, i.e., if rivals collaborate on R&D with a common partner, but that firms with an aggressive reputation for IP litigation may be able to restrict such knowledge spillovers. We argue that knowledge leakage is more prominent, and litigation reputation is less powerful, when the common partner is a university or public research institution adhering to the open science paradigm, compared with when the common partner is another (non-rival) firm. Patent similarity analysis among dyads of leading pharmaceutical firms provides support for these hypotheses.	Sarah Edris, René Belderbos, Victor Gilsing
8	2019	Do Management Innovations of Indigenous Firms Benefit from Managerial Spillovers from Multinational Enterprises? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge transfer through labor mobility, specifically managers moving from multinational enterprises to domestic firms, and how that movement generates spillovers. While it focuses on management innovation and firm performance rather than worker mobility frictions or aggregate growth, it directly speaks to the diffusion of knowledge across firms via employee movement. Integrating research on foreign direct investment spillover and management innovation literature, this study develops and tests a spillover–management innovation–performance process model. The model posits that managerial spillovers, defined as the movement of managers from multinational enterprises to domestic firms, are indirectly related to the latter’s performance through management innovation, which serves as a conversion platform internalizing acquired knowledge for performance attainment. Moreover, we propose that the density of foreign direct investment and indigenous firms’ absorptive capacity moderate the spillover–innovation and innovation–performance relationships, respectively...	Hongxin Zhao, Muammer Ozer, Weidong Rong, et al.
8	2025	Bridging the ivory tower and industry: How university science parks promote university-industry collaboration? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a mechanism for knowledge diffusion between universities and firms, showing how university science parks increase university-industry patent collaboration and the quality of those collaborations. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, it is highly relevant to the broader theme of technology transfer, spillovers, and institutional channels that facilitate innovation diffusion. We investigate the impact of university science parks (USPs)—platforms designed to foster university-industry (UI) connections, specifically focusing on their role in UI patent collaboration. Utilizing the introduction of USPs in China between 2006 and 2016, we find that they are associated with a notable 50.8 % increase in UI collaborative patents, equivalent to approximately 1.8 additional patents per year. We further proposed that USPs can facilitate UI collaboration through three mechanisms—spatial proximity, intermediary services, and knowledge complementarity—and provided corresponding empirical evidence to support these claims. Furthermore, measured by the patent citations, we also...	Yankun Kang, Rui-Ming Liu, Bingyan Yang
8	2015	Dynastic Entrepreneurship, Entry, and Non-Compete Enforcement ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies non-compete enforcement and employee spinoffs as a mechanism of knowledge transfer from incumbent firms to new entrants. Its focus on how legal restrictions and financing constraints shape firm entry, spillovers, and welfare maps closely to the project’s themes of worker mobility, technology diffusion, and the aggregate effects of mobility frictions. We investigate entry in a dynastic entrepreneurship (overlapping generations) environment created by employee spinoffs. Without finance constraints, enforcement of non-compete agreements unambiguously improves social welfare outcomes, and even increases the rate of spinoffs from original firms. Indeed, if employers have all the bargaining power vis--vis their employees, optimal entry of original firms and all subsequent employee spinoffs is achieved, despite the fact that the original firm can only negotiate with the first spinoff. However, if employees are unable to buy out their non-compete contracts, enforcement of these agreements shuts down socially profitable spinoff firms...	James E. Rauch
8	2019	Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence from Trade Secrets Laws ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how intellectual property protection affects the visibility of technology and the pace of cumulative knowledge diffusion through follow-on innovation. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its emphasis on disclosure, spillovers, and downstream innovation is highly relevant to understanding mechanisms that shape technology diffusion and aggregate welfare. We use exogenous variation in the strength of trade secrets protection to show that a relative weakening of patents (compared to trade secrets) has a disproportionately negative effect on the disclosure of processes - inventions that are not otherwise visible to society. We develop a structural model of initial and follow-on innovation to determine the effects of such a shift in disclosure on overall welfare in industries characterized by cumulative innovation. We find that while stronger trade secrets encourage investment in R&D, they may have negative e ects on overall welfare - the result of a significant decline in follow-on innovation.	Bernhard Ganglmair, Imke Reimers
8	2025	Unraveling topic switching and innovation in science ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how scientists switch research topics over their careers and how that mobility of ideas within researchers affects novelty and innovation. While it is about topic switching rather than labor-market mobility or firm-level knowledge diffusion, it speaks directly to how movement across knowledge domains influences the creation and spread of innovation. The selection of research topics shapes both individual scientific trajectories and the broader evolution of knowledge. Despite its critical role, a systematic investigation into the dynamics of topic switching among scientists and its relationship with scientific innovation remains limited. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset encompassing the career trajectories of 1.4 million scientists and 27.6 million publications from 1950 to 2020, I use a field-free and finely-grained framework to quantify shifts in research direction by measuring the knowledge distance between a paper's references and those of prior works. To account for systemic biases, I construct a null model that captures expected...	Alex J. Yang
8	2015	Workplace Heterogeneity and the Returns to Versatility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firm heterogeneity and on-the-job search frictions shape inter-firm worker mobility, a central mechanism in knowledge diffusion and labor market dynamics. Its focus on versatility, sorting, and impediments to mobility provides useful theory for understanding how worker movement affects the transmission of skills and the returns to mobility across firms. Abstract In the canonical random on-the-job search model with continuous firm heterogeneity, I show that a mean-preserving spread of the firm-productivity distribution raises the returns to mobility, i.e., the inter-firm mobility of workers as measured by the number of outside contacts per employment spell. Both sorting and rent-share mechanisms play a role. In a further contribution, I distinguish frictional and structural impediments to mobility in order to establish a link between mobility and skills via the concept of versatility. Versatility enhances a person’s mobility since a mismatch between job requirements and the person’s skill set is less likely to occur. I provide some...	Damir Stijepic
8	2021	The Heterogeneous Impact of Referrals on Labor Market Outcomes ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies referrals as a labor market mechanism that affects worker mobility, match formation, and earnings, all of which are central to how knowledge can move across firms through workers. Its on-the-job search model and analysis of business-contact referrals are especially relevant for understanding search frictions and hiring channels that shape the diffusion of skills and information, though it is less directly focused on technology spillovers or inventor mobility. We document a new set of facts regarding the impact of referrals on labor market outcomes. Our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between different types of referrals—those from family and friends and those from business contacts—and different occupations. Then we develop an on-the-job search model that incorporates referrals and calibrate the model to key moments in the data. The calibrated model yields new insights into the roles played by different types of referrals in the match formation process, and provides quantitative estimates of the effects of referrals on employment, earnings, output, and inequality.	Benjamin Lester, David Rivers, Giorgio Topa
8	2013	ON-THE-JOB SEARCH AND MORAL HAZARD ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search frictions, worker mobility, and how firm compensation contracts shape turnover, which are central to understanding labor market frictions in knowledge diffusion. Although it does not focus specifically on technology transfer or inventor mobility, its mechanism linking search frictions, retention incentives, and equilibrium turnover is highly relevant to how worker movement can facilitate or impede spillovers across firms. We analyze the interaction between intertemporal incentive contracts and search frictions associated with on-the-job search. In our model, agency problems call for wage contracts with deferred compensation. At the same time workers do on-the-job search. Deferred compensation improves workers' incentives to exert effort but distorts their on-the-job search decisions. We show that deferred compensation is less attractive when the value to the worker–firm pair of on-the-job search is high. Moreover, the interplay between search frictions and wage contracts creates feedback effects. If firms in equilibrium use contracts with deferred compensation, fewer firms with vacancies enter the on-the-job...	Espen R. Moen, Åsa Rosén
8	2018	Vinculando el talento de investigadores y emprendedores para la innovación ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies innovation through a matching model with search frictions, which directly connects to labor market frictions affecting knowledge diffusion and inventive outcomes. Its focus on linking researchers and entrepreneurs at the country level is useful for understanding how mobility and matching conditions shape innovation, although it is less directly about worker movement, non-competes, or firm-level knowledge spillovers. El objetivo de la presente investigación es analizar la vinculación entre el talento de investigadores y emprendedores, mediante un modelo de emparejamiento considerando las fricciones que pudieran existir ( matching model with search frictions ). La principal contribución se basa en ampliar el conocimiento en la modelación de la innovación exitosa como resultado de un proceso de búsqueda con fricciones. Se muestra evidencia de que los países que son creativos también son productores de conocimiento, y a la vez tienen mejores insumos para la innovación. Para lograr ser más competitivo a nivel país deben considerarse todos los factores ( inputs ) que impulsan la innovación ( outputs)...	Campus Ciudad de México Universidad Panamericana, Antonia Terán-Bustamante, Esteban Colla De Robertis, et al.
8	2018	Growth Through Inter-sectoral Knowledge Linkages ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge moves across sectors and how those linkages shape firm innovation decisions and aggregate growth. While it is not primarily about worker mobility or labor market frictions, its general equilibrium model of technology diffusion and cross-sector innovation is highly relevant to understanding the broader channels of knowledge spillovers. Abstract The majority of innovations are developed by multi-sector firms. The knowledge needed to invent new products is more easily adapted from some sectors than from others. We study this network of knowledge linkages between sectors and its impact on firm innovation and aggregate growth. We first document a set of sectoral-level and firm-level observations on knowledge applicability and firms’ multi-sector patenting behaviour. We then develop a general equilibrium model of firm innovation in which inter-sectoral knowledge linkages determine the set of sectors a firm chooses to innovate in and how much R&D to invest in each sector. It captures how firms evolve in the technology space...	Jie Cai, Nan Li
8	2017	Multinationals, competition and productivity spillovers through worker mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies productivity spillovers that occur through worker mobility, which is central to the project’s focus on how labor movement diffuses knowledge across firms. It also examines how product-market competition affects mobility and spillovers in high-tech industries, offering evidence on a key friction shaping technology diffusion, though it does not directly address non-competes or broader policy impacts on aggregate innovation. Multinational firms are believed to impact the productivity of domestic firms through worker mobility. Fosfuri et al. (J Int Econ 53:205–222, 2001) suggest that worker mobility and technological spillovers are more likely to materialize when the local and the multinational firm do not compete fiercely in the product market. We assess empirically the importance of the hypothesis by using the Finnish longitudinal employer–employee data. Consistent with the predictions of the model, we find that competition is negatively related to worker mobility but only in high-tech industries where productivity spillovers are present. Thus, our results detail a channel through which competition may...	Katariina Nilsson Hakkala, Alessandro Sembenelli
8	2020	Worker flows, reallocation dynamics, and firm productivity: new evidence from longitudinal matched employer–employee data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker flows, reallocation dynamics, and how labor market flexibility affects firm productivity, which are central to understanding how mobility shapes knowledge diffusion and firm performance. It does not focus specifically on knowledge spillovers, inventors, or non-compete policies, but its evidence on heterogeneous effects of hiring and separation is useful for the broader worker-mobility and firm-dynamics agenda. Abstract This article investigates the impact of the worker flows of a firm on productivity by using unique longitudinal matched employer–employee data. The analysis has split a firm’s total worker flows into three components: workers’ replacements (excess worker flows), hirings introduced to increase the firm’s employment level (net hirings), and separations of workers intended to decrease the firm’s workforce (net separations). This has allowed the impact of workers’ replacements, which represent the most prominent and compelling feature of worker mobility, to be isolated from the other two components. Endogeneity has been dealt with by using a modified version of Ackerberg et al.'s...	Elena Grinza
8	2024	Spatial spillover effects of skilled migration on innovation in China ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies skilled migration as a mechanism for spatial knowledge diffusion and its effects on regional innovation, which is central to understanding how worker mobility transmits technology across locations. It also speaks to policy-relevant mobility frictions and heterogeneous spillovers across regions, although it is more focused on geographic agglomeration than on firm-level labor market frictions like non-competes or hiring/retention decisions. Despite the importance of interregional skilled migration to regional development, few studies have explored its spatial spillover effects and their changes over time. Thus, employing the Spatial Durbin Model, we investigate the presence of regional spillovers of skilled migration at both national and sub-national levels in China. Especially, we focus on the regional difference and change in the spatial spillover. Although our results confirm positive spillover effects at the national level due to the strong mobility characteristic of skilled migrants, developed regions benefit more from spillovers of skilled migration than developing regions, and such effects are divergent in different...	Xing Gao, Jin Zhu, He Zhu, et al.
8	2011	Lens or Prism? A Comparative Assessment of Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows from Public Research ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it studies patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows, which is central to understanding how ideas move across organizations and possibly through inventor or worker mobility. Although the title emphasizes public research rather than labor-market frictions, it directly speaks to the measurement of technology diffusion and spillovers that underpin the project. No abstract available.	Michael Roach, Wesley M. Cohen
8	2022	Monopsony in the High-Skilled Migrant Labor Market - Evidence from H-1B Petition Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market frictions and employer ties in the high-skilled migrant labor market, directly linking concentration to lower wages and reduced job mobility. While it does not primarily measure knowledge diffusion or innovation outcomes, the H-1B setting is highly relevant for understanding how mobility constraints may affect the movement of skilled workers and, indirectly, technology transfer across firms. This paper assesses the extent of monopsony power in the labor market for highly skilled immigrants, focusing on employment concentration and its impact on wages. We obtained the universe of H-1B visa petitions, the largest high-skilled immigration program in the U.S., through a FOIA request. We ﬁrst discover that the H-1B labor market is 30% more concentrated than the broader U.S. labor market, with a steadily increasing trend over the past decade. We then examine the causal impact of high employment concentration on H-1B workers’ wages by leveraging the lottery system for over-the-cap H-1B applications. The random lottery win rates in each market alter employment concentration, as di ↵...	Seohee Kim, Alison Pei
8	2021	From employee to entrepreneur: Learning, employer size, and spinout dynamics ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker learning from employers, spinout formation, and how knowledge transfers from incumbent firms to new firms through employee mobility. Its model of occupational choice and firm dynamics with aggregate implications aligns well with the project’s interest in labor-market-driven technology diffusion, firm entry, and productivity effects. Most new firms are founded by former employees of existing firms – spinouts. This paper explores how existing firms shape the entry and post-entry dynamics of spinouts and studies the aggregate implications of this relationship. Using micro-data from Mexico, I show that employees from small firms are more likely to form spinouts than employees of large firms. In addition, spinouts from large employers start at a larger scale and grow faster than spinouts from small employers. To reconcile these patterns, I develop a model of occupational choice and firm dynamics in which employees can learn from their employers. Using a calibrated version of the model, I analyze the implications of the link...	Faisal Sohail
8	2024	Training and search on the job ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, heterogeneous firms, and how labor market frictions shape training, wages, and worker mobility. Its focus on human capital accumulation and the equilibrium effects of frictions on training and future employers is directly relevant to understanding how mobility constraints affect knowledge diffusion, though it is less explicitly about spillovers, inventors, or policy interventions like non-competes. The paper studies human capital accumulation over workers' careers in an on-the-job search setting with heterogeneous firms. In renegotiation-proof employment contracts, more productive firms provide more training. General and specific training both induce higher wages within jobs and with future employers, even conditional on the future employer type. Because matches do not internalize the specific capital loss from employer changes, specific human capital can be over-accumulated, more so in low type firms. The analysis also establishes that general training can be efficient regardless of the level of labor market frictions. We calibrate the model to the US economy using Compustat and...	Rasmus Lentz, Nicolas Roys
8	2024	Monopsony power in the labor market ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies monopsony power, search frictions, and policies like noncompetition agreements that shape worker mobility and job switching, all of which are central to how labor market frictions affect knowledge diffusion. While it is not specifically about technology transfer or inventor mobility, its discussion of employer competition and mobility constraints is highly relevant for understanding how labor market structure can influence worker movement and the spread of ideas. Labor markets are not perfectly competitive: Monopsony power enables employers to pay workers less than the marginal revenue product of labor. We review three theoretical frameworks explaining monopsony power. Oligopsony models attribute it to strategic interactions among a limited number of firms. Job differentiation models cite imperfect job substitution and heterogeneous worker preferences. Search-and-matching models point to search frictions hindering instantaneous access to all available jobs. We then develop a theory-informed discussion of the empirical evidence on antitrust policies, policies that reduce barriers to job switching, and policies countering monopsony's effects on...	José Azar, Ioana Marinescu
8	2020	The Impacts of Restricting Mobility of Skilled Service Workers: Evidence from Physicians This paper is highly relevant because it directly studies how noncompete agreements restrict skilled-worker mobility and how those restrictions affect labor-market outcomes and firm performance. Although the setting is physicians rather than inventors or engineers, it speaks to the project’s core themes of mobility frictions, retention, turnover, and the resulting effects on knowledge or client-based spillovers within firms. Why do skilled services firms use noncompete agreements (NCAs), which prohibit workers from leaving firms and competing against them? We conduct a survey of physicians linking NCA use to labor-market outcomes and firm performance and show that by deterring poaching of patients NCAs increase the return to job tenure, with larger effects in states with more enforceable NCA laws. These effects are consistent with NCAs enabling practices to allocate clients to new physicians through intrafirm referrals, reducing a form of investment holdup. We discuss an array of supporting suggestive evidence, but also find NCAs provide some benefits by reducing job turnover.	Kurt Lavetti, Carol Simon, William D. White
8	2024	The Percolation of Knowledge across Space ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge flows through networks of firms and inventors, directly addressing technology diffusion and the spatial decay of citations. While it does not focus on labor mobility or policy frictions like non-competes, its dynamic network model and evidence on how firms acquire knowledge are highly relevant to understanding diffusion mechanisms across firms. We propose an explanation for the negative effect of distance on knowledge flows, based on the fact that firms use their network to acquire new knowledge, and that a firm's network expands over its life-cycle. We build contacts in the network with past patent citations. We then use subsequent citations added by office examiners to identify how existing links influence which inventions firms rely on. We start by showing that knowledge percolates: firms are more likely to rely on patents produced by their contacts, and even by contacts of their contacts, than on similar patents from outside their close network. Building on this fact, we study a dynamic network formation model: it predicts...	Pierre Cotterlaz, Arthur Guillouzouic
8	2025	Digitalisation, institutions and governance, and diffusion: mechanisms and evidence ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion and explicitly discusses how institutions and governance shape the speed and breadth of diffusion, which is central to understanding frictions that affect knowledge spillovers. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility, non-competes, or inventor movement, it provides useful evidence on economy-wide determinants of diffusion and productivity effects. Digitalisation can be described as a sequence of technology and supply shocks which affect the economy through employment and labour markets, productivity and output, and competition and market structure. This paper focuses on how digitalisation - the process of diffusion of digital technologies - is affected by institutions and governance. It discusses a number of theoretical mechanisms and empirical evidence for different sets of European and other countries while also accounting for cross-section dependence that might be caused by technology spillovers. The results indicate that a higher quality of institutions is usually associated with both a greater speed of diffusion and a greater...	Vincent Labhard, Jonne Lehtimäki, Claudio Baccianti
8	1979	Barriers to Technology. [Title only] This title strongly suggests a paper about obstacles to the spread or adoption of technology, which is central to the project’s focus on knowledge diffusion and productivity effects. Even without the abstract, it plausibly connects to frictions such as mobility constraints, search frictions, or policy barriers that shape how technology moves across firms and workers. No abstract available.	Ware Myers
8	2024	The nexus between labour mobility and innovation: an empirical analysis ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer and innovation, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement diffuses technology across places and firms. It is somewhat less direct than the core literature because it emphasizes international migration and aggregate patenting rather than firm-level worker mobility frictions, non-competes, or mechanisms inside labor markets. Labour mobility is a crucial feature of human nature and an effective medium of knowledge transfer. As the workers shift from one region to another, their embodied skills travel with them, and the diversities of skills make complementarities of ideas that encourage new methods of production or innovation in the destination. Further innovation boosts economic growth and smoothens the mobility path. In this way, a virtuous cycle takes place between migration and innovation, which has not been comprehensively explored in the existing literature. Especially in developing nations, such studies are a handful in number and are not at a consensus to derive the normative conclusion. As the...	Jitamitra Behera, Akriti Jain, Ruchi Sharma
8	2022	Fostering the Diffusion of General Purpose Technologies: Evidence from the Licensing of the Transistor Patents* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion and spillovers directly, focusing on how licensing and knowledge transfer accelerate the spread of a general purpose technology. While it does not center on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it provides strong evidence on alternative diffusion channels that are highly relevant for understanding how knowledge moves across firms. How do licensing and technology transfer influence the spread of General Purpose Technologies? To answer this question, we analyze the diffusion of the transistor, one of the most important technologies of our time. We show that the transistor diffusion and cross‐technology spillovers increased dramatically after AT&T began licensing its transistor patents along with symposia to educate follow‐on inventors in 1952. Both these symposia and the licensing of the patents itself played important roles in the diffusion. A subsequent reduction in royalties did not lead to further increases, suggesting that licensing and technology transfer were more important than specific royalty rates.	Markus Nagler, Monika Schnitzer, Martin Watzinger
8	2023	Entrepreneurial Migration ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the mobility of entrepreneurial firms across locations and how frictions and city attributes shape the movement of high-potential startups, which is central to understanding the diffusion of knowledge and innovation. Although it focuses on startup migration rather than worker mobility per se, the results speak to how location choices and policy differences affect where innovative activity and potentially embodied knowledge move. Abstract We track the movement of high-potential startups using cross-state business registrations and estimate the utility of cities to moving startups using a revealed preference approach. 6.6% of these startups move across state borders during their first five years. Startup hubs like Silicon Valley and Boston tend to lose startups to other cities. Our findings show that startups prefer traditional hubs when they move soon after being founded, but later prefer cities with lower taxes. This pattern is not due to vertical sorting or industrial specialization.	Kevin A. Bryan, Jorge Guzmán
8	2020	The Effects of Terrorist Attacks on Inventor Productivity and Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventor mobility and how an external shock changes the reallocation of skilled workers across firms. It is especially relevant for understanding how frictions and disruptions affect knowledge diffusion, inventor productivity, and the spatial direction of human capital transfer, even though the shock is terrorism rather than a labor-market policy or firm-side mobility restriction. We examine the causal effects of terrorism on inventor productivity and mobility. During the five-year window after terrorist attacks, inventors close to the strikes are more likely to move to distant companies. While the inventors that continue working for firms near the attacks exhibit a drastic productivity decline, those that relocate to faraway companies do not. These results prove robust to alternative specifications and numerous controls including the influence of the 9/11 attacks. Our findings provide novel insights about the impact of shocks that distort human capital productivity and promote the mobility and reallocation of specialized resources among firms.	Eliezer M. Fich, Tung Nguyen, Dimitris Petmezas
8	2018	Inventor Name Disambiguation with Gradient Boosting Decision Tree and Inventor Mobility in China (1985-2016) ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility directly, using patent disambiguation to measure regional movement of Chinese inventors over time. Its main contribution is methodological rather than causal, so it is useful for documenting mobility patterns but does not analyze how labor market frictions or mobility policies affect knowledge diffusion and innovation. This paper presents the first systematic disambiguation result of all Chinese patent inventors in the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) patent database from 1985 to 2016. We provide a method of constructing high-qualitative training data from lists of rare names and evidence for the reliability of these generated labels when large-scale and representative hand-labeled data are crucial but expensive, prone to error, and even impossible to obtain. We then compare the performances of seven supervised models, i.e., naive Bayes, logistic, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), as well as tree-based methods (random forest, AdaBoost, and...	Yin Deyun, Kazuyuki Motohashi
8	2013	Mobility of human capital and its effect on regional economic development. Review of theory and empirical literature This review is closely related because it centers on the mobility of skilled human capital and how that mobility affects economic growth and regional development, which aligns with the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for technology and knowledge diffusion. It is somewhat broader than the core topic because it emphasizes regional development and human capital accumulation in general rather than firm-level mechanisms like inventor mobility, non-compete constraints, or labor-market frictions. According to economic theory, supported by rich empirical evidence, the ability of an economy to accumulate a high quality human capital is an important factor of economic growth. Since economies better endowed with human capital grow at a higher rate, the mobility of skilled individuals should have a meaningful effect on the economic perspectives of different countries and regions. \nIn this paper we attempt to systematise the existing literature on the impact that human capital mobility has on economic growth and some other aspects of regional development, in order to better understand the channels through which this impact is accomplished and the significance of the observed effects. We...	Mikołaj Herbst, Jakub Rok
8	2023	Measuring the Characteristics and Employment Dynamics of U.S. Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors directly, including their employer characteristics, earnings, and employment dynamics, which are central to understanding worker mobility and the diffusion of knowledge through labor markets. It is especially relevant as a data-building foundation for research on inventor mobility, firm matching, and the mechanisms through which human capital transfers across firms, even if it does not by itself focus on frictions like non-competes or policy effects. Innovation is a key driver of long run economic growth.Studying innovation requires a clear view of the characteristics and behavior of the individuals that create new ideas.A general lack of rich, large-scale data has constrained such analyses.We address this by introducing a new dataset linking patent inventors to survey, census, and administrative microdata at the U.S. Census Bureau.We use this data to provide a first look at the demographic characteristics, employer characteristics, earnings, and employment dynamics of inventors.These linkages, which will be available to researchers with approved access, dramatically increases the scope of what can be learned about inventors and...	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
8	2024	From boundaryless to boundary-crossing: Toward a friction-based model of career transitions and job performance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility transmits knowledge, skills, and social relationships across jobs and how frictions in career transitions affect post-move performance and creativity. While it focuses more on individual career transitions than firm-to-firm spillovers or policy frictions like non-competes, its model of mobility costs and portability of performance maps directly onto the project’s interest in how worker movement shapes knowledge diffusion and innovation. The portability of performance for individuals during a career transition is not straightforward. Differences between jobs can create a drag on performance; alternatively, the differences can be an input to creativity and innovation. In this paper, we develop a model of career transitions that centers around the concept of career frictions, which we define as the disrupting differences felt by individuals between a new role and career attributes accumulated through their prior work experience (i.e., knowledge, social relationships, and imprints and identity). We argue that experienced individuals bring their accumulated career attributes into new jobs, and that the relationship between...	Gina Dokko, Winnie Jiang
8	2015	Moving people with ideas - innovation inter-regional mobility and firm heterogeneity This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion and innovation, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement and technology spillovers. It also emphasizes how firm heterogeneity shapes the innovation gains from inflows of skilled workers, though it is more about inter-regional mobility and firm strategy than labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. This paper looks at the link between inter-regional mobility, innovation and firms' behavioural heterogeneity in their reliance on localised external sources of knowledge. By linking patent data (capturing inventors' inter-regional mobility) with firm-level data (providing information on firms' innovation inputs and behaviour) a robust identification strategy makes it possible to shed new light on the geographical mobility-innovation nexus. The analysis of English firms suggests that firm-level heterogeneity - largely overlooked in previous studies - is the key to explain the innovation impact of inter-regional mobility over and above learning-by-hiring mechanisms. A causal link between...	Riccardo Crescenzi, Luisa Gagliardi
8	2014	Immigration & Ideas: What Did Russian Scientists 'Bring' to the US? This paper is closely related because it studies how skilled worker mobility, specifically immigrant scientists, transmits knowledge and increases citations to prior work. It directly speaks to the project’s core theme of labor-driven knowledge diffusion, though it focuses more on scientific spillovers from immigration than on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility costs. This paper examines how high-skilled immigrants contribute to knowledge diffusion using a rich dataset of Russian scientists and US citations to Soviet-era publications. Analysis of a panel of US cities and scientific fields shows that citations to Soviet-era work increased significantly with the arrival of immigrants. A difference-in-differences analysis with matched paper-pairs also shows that after Russian scientists moved to the US, citations to their Soviet-era papers increased relative to control papers. Both strategies reveal scientific field-specific effects. Ideas in high-impact papers and papers previously accessible to US scientists were the most likely to "spill over" to natives.	Ina Ganguli
8	2020	A Firm Scientific Community: Industry Participation and Knowledge Diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies knowledge diffusion from scientists to firms and provides causal evidence that firm participation in scientific communities increases diffusion into firms’ inventive and scientific activities. It is highly relevant to the project’s focus on how worker and scientist interactions, especially external collaborations and firm participation in knowledge networks, affect technology transfer and innovation, though it is less centered on labor-market frictions or worker mobility per se. We study the diffusion of knowledge from scientists to firms within scientific communities. We build on a unique dataset on conference proceedings as "paper trail" of almost all relevant conference series in computer science since 1996. More than 5000 firms appear as conference sponsors or as affiliations in proceedings. Their participation is concentrated in the highly ranked conferences and their scientific contributions are on average highly cited. We exploit direct flights as an instrumental variable for the participation choice of scientists between a conference where a firm participates and other similar conferences. The participation in the same conference has a positive causal...	Stefano Horst Baruffaldi, Felix Pöge
8	2024	Noncompete agreements in a rigid labor market: the case of Italy ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies noncompete agreements as a labor market friction that restricts worker mobility, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion across firms. Its focus on Italy broadens the institutional context by showing that mobility constraints and imperfect enforcement can persist even in rigid labor markets, informing how policy and regulation affect worker movement and spillovers. Abstract Noncompete agreements limiting the mobility of workers have been found to be widespread in the United States, a flexible and lightly regulated labor market. We explore the use of noncompete agreements in a rigid and highly regulated labor market, where labor mobility is low, and the labor market is highly regulated via legislation and collective bargaining. Based on a novel survey of Italian workers and an analysis of the regulatory framework, our study shows how trends and patterns in the use of noncompete agreements are not specific to a flexible labor market. Even in a rigid and highly regulated labor market, noncompete agreements are widespread, and often do not comply with the...	Tito Boeri, Andrea Garnero, Lorenzo Giovanni Luisetto
8	2023	An Anatomy of Monopsony: Search Frictions, Amenities and Bargaining in Concentrated Markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies monopsony power arising from search frictions and market concentration, which are central labor market frictions affecting worker mobility and wage-setting. While it does not focus specifically on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its analysis of how mobility frictions shape job flows and wages provides useful context for understanding how restrictions on worker movement may influence technology transfer and firm dynamics. We contribute a theory in which three channels interact to determine the degree of monopsony power and therefore the wedge between a worker's spot wage and her marginal product (henceforth, the wage markdown): (1) heterogeneity in worker-firm-specific preferences (nonwage amenities), (2) firm granularity, and (3) off-and on-the-job search frictions.We use Norwegian data to discipline each channel and then reproduce novel reduced-form empirical relationships between market concentration, job flows, wages and wage inequality.Our main exercise quantifies the contribution of each channel to income inequality and wage markdowns.The markdowns are 21 percent in our baseline estimation.Removing...	David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, Andreas Kostøl, et al.
8	2021	Propagation and Amplification of Local Productivity Spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge and productivity spillovers propagate across firm networks, which is central to understanding diffusion mechanisms in your project. Although it focuses on plant-level networks rather than worker mobility, it directly speaks to how local shocks are transmitted through firms and how knowledge-sharing links affect aggregate productivity. The gains from agglomeration economies are believed to be highly localized. Using confidential Census plant‐level data, we show that large industrial plant openings raise the productivity not only of local plants but also of distant plants hundreds of miles away, which belong to large multi‐plant, multi‐region firms that are exposed to the local productivity spillover through one of their plants. This “global” productivity spillover does not decay with distance and is stronger if plants are in industries that share knowledge with each other. To quantify the significance of firms' plant‐level networks for the propagation and amplification of local productivity shocks, we estimate a...	Xavier Giroud, Simone Lenzu, Ramain Quinn Maingi, et al.
8	2024	Talent, Geography, and Offshore R&D ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms hire researchers across countries to generate new knowledge, directly linking worker talent allocation to technology creation and diffusion. While its focus is on offshore R&D and globalization rather than labor-market frictions like non-competes or worker mobility per se, it is highly relevant for understanding how geography and firm hiring shape knowledge transfer and productivity growth. Abstract I model and quantify the impact of a new dimension of globalization: offshore R&D. In the model, firms employ researchers across the globe to develop new product blueprints and then engage in offshore production and exporting. Frictions impeding trade and the separation of production from R&D lead to a “market-access” motive for offshore R&D, while cross-country differences in the distributions of firm knowhow and worker ability generate a “talent-acquisition” motive. I discipline the model using empirical facts derived from a new firm-level dataset. Counterfactual experiments show that the two motives can account for a significant portion of the observed offshore R&D...	Jingting Fan
8	2024	Technology adoption, innovation policy and catching-up. ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion and adoption from the frontier as a driver of growth, which is central to understanding knowledge spillovers and catching-up. However, it is more about macro growth equilibria and innovation policy than worker mobility or labor market frictions, so it does not directly address the project’s core mechanisms. Abstract A model is proposed where economic growth is driven by innovation alongside the diffusion and adoption of technology from the frontier. Innovation investments are related to households savings, which generates multiple equilibria with low and high levels of innovation and productivity. Low-level equilibria are unstable. Starting from a position with low levels of investment and innovation, increasing investments are associated with high but decreasing dependence on international technology diffusion. A major objective of policy-making is to increase investment sufficiently in the lower end to reach the high-level steady state. An economic rationale is provided for the existence of...	Juan Ricardo Perilla Jiménez, Thomas Ziesemer
8	2016	Training and Search On the Job ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, heterogeneous firms, and how labor market frictions shape worker mobility, training, and human capital accumulation. Its focus on how frictions affect training and the consequences of job changes for specific human capital connects directly to knowledge diffusion through worker movement, though it is less directly about inventors, non-competes, or aggregate innovation outcomes. The paper studies human capital accumulation over workers' careers in an on the job search setting with heterogenous firms. In renegotiation proof employment contracts, more productive firms provide more training. Both general and specific training induce higher wages within jobs, and with future employers, even conditional on the future employer type. Because matches do not internalize the specific capital loss from employer changes, specific human capital can be over-accumulated, more so in low type firms. While validating the Acemoglu and Pischke (1999) mechanisms, the analysis nevertheless arrives at the opposite conclusion: That increased labor market friction reduces training in...	Rasmus Lentz, Nicolas Roys
8	2007	Inventors' Response to Firm Acquisitions ↗ [Title only] This title is likely highly relevant because firm acquisitions can trigger inventor turnover, changes in retention incentives, and shifts in how knowledge is transferred across firms, all central to worker mobility and diffusion of technology. Even without an abstract, it plausibly speaks to how ownership changes affect inventive activity and the movement of skilled workers, which fits the project’s focus on knowledge spillovers and firm-level labor decisions. No abstract available.	Katrin Hussinger
8	2020	Learning by hiring, network centrality and within-firm wage dispersion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge transfer across firms, exactly at the core of your project. Its focus on learning-by-hiring, tacit knowledge diffusion, and firm networks speaks directly to how labor market frictions and mobility shape the spread of knowledge, though it emphasizes within-firm wage dispersion more than aggregate productivity or policy restrictions like non-competes. In this paper, we highlight knowledge as specific channel through which labour mobility affects conditional within-firm wage dispersion. We present a model in which workers acquire knowledge on the job and firms pursue a policy of learning-by-hiring. The latter generates workers flows that connect firms in a network. A firm’s position in the network depends on its capacity to absorb the tacit knowledge developed by other firms in the economy. The model predicts that firms central to the network, those with the highest absorptive capacity of tacit knowledge, have the highest wage dispersion. Using 1995-2001 Veneto (a region of Italy) matched employer-employee data, we map workers flows...	Ambra Poggi, Piergiovanna Natale
8	2024	Strategic restraint: When do human‐capital‐intensive companies choose (not) to use noncompete agreements? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies noncompete agreements as a labor-market friction shaping firms’ ability to attract skilled workers, which is central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It is more about firms’ strategic use or nonuse of NCAs than about measured spillovers or productivity effects, but it is highly relevant to understanding how restrictive covenants affect talent flows across firms. Abstract Research Summary Extant work in strategic management has focused on the role of noncompete agreements (NCAs)—a form of restrictive legal lever used by firms when managing human capital—and conceptualized them as being advantageous to firms. Challenging this notion, we highlight a novel downside of using NCAs and show how their use by some firms creates differentiation opportunities for rival firms. We analyze a unique survey dataset to examine the heterogeneity in the firms' actual use of NCAs conditional on industry and state. We find that the nonuse of NCAs is more common among firms that rely more heavily on talent and are also not the industry leaders, and such firms are more...	Martin Ganco, Jingnan Liu, Haifeng Wang, et al.
8	2015	Knowledge Migration: A Cross-National Analysis ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor migration as a channel for knowledge spillovers and innovation, which is central to your project’s focus on worker mobility and diffusion of technology. Its cross-national patent-based analysis and theoretical model of how inventor movement affects local innovation provide useful evidence on knowledge transfer, though it is less directly about labor market frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes. This study contributes to existing literature on the innovative activity of firms, examining how migration can be a channel for knowledge spillover. Indeed, the aim of the paper is to introduce a new variable, which is computed on the basis of the distribution of inventors across countries, according to patent data. The paper consists of a theoretical model and an empirical analysis, which is a cross-national analysis of the United States, Japan and Europe, based upon a new dataset of worldwide R&D-intensive manufacturing firms. We use data from all EU R&D investment scoreboard editions, which were issued every year from 2002 to 2010 by the JRC-IPTS. The empirical results suggest that the...	Luigi Aldieri, Concetto Paolo Vinci
8	2015	Does Labour Mobility Foster Innovation? : Evidence from Sweden This paper is closely related because it directly studies how labor mobility among knowledge workers affects firm innovation output through hiring and worker movement. It also speaks to knowledge diffusion across firms and regions, including learning-by-hiring and diaspora effects, which are central to the project’s focus on worker mobility as a channel of technology transfer. By utilising a Swedish unique, matched employer-employee dataset that has been pooled with firm-level patent application data, we provide new evidence that knowledge workers’ mobility has a positive and strongly significant impact on firm innovation output, as measured by firm patent applications. The effect is particularly strong for knowledge workers that have previously worked in a patenting firm (the learning-by-hiring effect), but firms losing a knowledge worker are also shown to benefit (the diaspora effect), albeit more weakly. Finally, the effect is more pronounced when the joining worker originates in another region.	Pontus Braunerhjelm, Ding Ding, Per Thulin
8	2017	Learning remotely: R&D satellites, intra‐firm linkages, and knowledge sourcing ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firm organization and geographic placement of R&D satellites facilitate knowledge sourcing and the diffusion of technology through inventors and internal firm linkages. It does not focus directly on worker mobility frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes, but the role of inventors previously patenting at other local firms makes it highly relevant to knowledge transfer via labor movement. Abstract Firms venture abroad not only to access resources and markets but also to learn. Yet there remains limited empirical evidence that headquarters can access geographically remote knowledge by establishing a presence in the remote location. Using U.S. patent data, I show that firm headquarters disproportionately source knowledge from third parties in remote locations where they have an R&D satellite. This “satellite effect” on knowledge flow is economically significant, representing up to 60% of the knowledge‐flow premium associated with collocation. Furthermore, the effect seems to be stronger for recent knowledge, as well as in areas of satellite technological specialization...	Joël Blit
8	2018	Foreign R&D satellites as a medium for the international diffusion of knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a concrete mechanism of knowledge diffusion: how foreign R&D satellites of multinationals transmit technology from headquarters to firms in host countries. It also connects to the project’s interest in worker/inventor mobility and knowledge transfer by showing that satellite staffing patterns and local inventor networks shape the extent of diffusion. Abstract I examine the extent to which foreign R&D satellites of multinational firms act as a medium for the international diffusion of knowledge. Using patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, I compare the frequency with which headquarters patents are cited by third‐party firms in the satellite's host country relative to a control group of patents, and this both before and after the establishment of the satellite (using a difference‐in‐differences approach). The results suggest that the satellite increases the flow of knowledge from the multinational's headquarters to firms in the satellite's host country. This satellite effect on knowledge diffusion is largest in host...	Joël Blit
8	2014	Learning on the Job? Employee Mobility in the Asset Management Industry ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it directly studies employee mobility and suggests learning-by-doing or knowledge transfer within the asset management industry, which fits the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for diffusion. Even if the setting is finance rather than manufacturing or patents, mobility-driven human capital transfer and its effects on firm performance and information diffusion are central to the research themes. No abstract available.	Aaron Chatterji, Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Evan Rawley
8	2024	On the inefficiency of non‐competes in low‐wage labour markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements as a labor market friction that affects worker turnover, wages, and hiring, which are central to understanding how mobility constraints shape knowledge diffusion. Although it focuses on low-wage labor markets rather than skilled workers or inventors, its equilibrium analysis of policy impacts on mobility and efficiency is highly relevant to the project’s broader questions about restrictions on worker movement and aggregate outcomes. We study the efficiency of non‐compete agreements (NCAs) in an equilibrium model of labour turnover. The model is consistent with empirical studies showing that NCAs reduce turnover and average wages for low‐wage workers. The model also predicts that, by reducing turnover, NCAs raise recruitment and employment. We show that optimal NCA policy: (i) is characterized by a Hosios‐like condition that balances the benefits of higher employment against the costs of inefficient congestion and poaching; (ii) depends critically on the minimum wage; and (iii) alone cannot always achieve the constrained‐efficient allocation—a result that also holds for optimal minimum wage policy—yet with both...	Tristan Potter, Bart Hobijn, André Kurmann
8	2021	Bundling Postemployment Restrictive Covenants: When, Why, and How It Matters ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies post-employment restrictive covenants, including non-competes, that directly shape worker mobility and the diffusion of knowledge embedded in human capital. Its analysis of how firms bundle these covenants and the resulting worker and firm outcomes is highly relevant to understanding labor market frictions, though it is more about contract adoption and enforcement than economy-wide innovation or productivity dynamics. Many of a firm’s most important informational or relational resources are at risk of diffusion to its competitors because they are embedded in the firm’s human capital. Using novel firmand workerlevel data, we present descriptive evidence on the adoption of and outcomes associated with four post-employment restrictive covenants (PERCs) that limit the diffusion of such resources to competitors: non-disclosure agreements (NDA), non-solicitation agreements, non-recruitment agreements, and non-compete agreements. We find that firms tend to adopt these PERCs together, with just three combinations (no PERCs, only an NDA, all four) covering more than 82% of workers and 70% of firms. We examine two...	Natarajan Balasubramanian, Evan Starr, Shotaro Yamaguchi
8	2021	The Diffusion of Disruptive Technologies ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how disruptive technologies diffuse across firms and labor markets, including the role of skilled jobs, geographic concentration, and the spread of technology over time. While it focuses more on technology diffusion patterns than on labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs, its evidence on hiring, skill composition, and knowledge spread is highly relevant to worker-mediated diffusion and innovation dynamics. We identify novel technologies using textual analysis of patents, job postings, and earnings calls. Our approach enables us to identify and document the diffusion of 29 disruptive technologies across firms and labor markets in the U.S. Five stylized facts emerge from our data. First, the locations where technologies are developed that later disrupt businesses are geographically highly concentrated, even more so than overall patenting. Second, as the technologies mature and the number of new jobs related to them grows, they gradually spread across space. While initial hiring is concentrated in high-skilled jobs, over time the mean skill level in new positions associated with the technologies...	Nicholas Bloom, Tarek A. Hassan, Aakash Kalyani, et al.
8	2020	EFFICIENCY OF WAGE BARGAINING WITH ON‐THE‐JOB SEARCH ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, worker turnover, and how wage bargaining affects the efficiency of job-to-job mobility, which are central mechanisms in knowledge diffusion through labor markets. While it does not focus directly on technology spillovers or inventor mobility, its analysis of search frictions and firm entry/turnover provides important theoretical background for understanding how labor market structure shapes movement across firms and the resulting allocation of workers. Abstract This article studies efficiency in a general class of search models where both unemployed and employed workers search for better jobs and can meet multiple firms simultaneously. Employers can respond to outside offers and wages are a weighted average of the productivities of the current employer and a credible poaching firm. I derive a condition that balances firms' bargaining power and their meeting externality. This condition ensures efficiency of both worker turnover and firm entry. Finally, the efficiency condition unifies and extends many of the results on the efficiency of equilibrium search models.	Xiaoming Cai
8	2023	Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to “Good” Firms? ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a focus on worker or talent mobility across firms and how that movement is shaped by firm characteristics, which is highly relevant to knowledge diffusion and labor-market sorting. The “good firms” framing also hints at matching, retention, and possibly productivity or innovation effects, though the exact mechanism is uncertain without an abstract. No abstract available.	Emanuele Colonnelli, Timothy McQuade, Gabriel Lobato Ramos, et al.
8	2000	Technology Diffusion and the Spatial Distribution of Wages in the U.S. ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on technology diffusion across geographic units and how that shapes wages, which is central to understanding knowledge spillovers and the aggregate consequences of diffusion frictions. It is not specifically about worker mobility, non-competes, or firm-level hiring and retention, but it provides useful evidence on spatial diffusion mechanisms that likely operate through labor movement and local knowledge transfer. What explains the spatial distribution of wages across US counties? I find that two of the most important factors are spatial technology diffusion and externalities due to the aggregate scale of production. One empirical finding supporting the importance of spatial technology diffusion is that average wages in a county decrease with the average level of schooling in neighboring counties when employment in the county and average wages in neighboring counties are held constant. All empirical results are obtained using a novel instrument for (endogenous) employment at the county-level and take into account other factors (e.g. productivity-differences across states, climate) that may determine...	Antonio Ciccone
8	2021	The Differential Impact of Intrafirm Collaboration and Technological Network Centrality on Employees’ Likelihood of Leaving the Firm ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility and the role of intrafirm networks in shaping whether skilled workers leave firms, move to other firms, or start new ventures. It speaks to knowledge diffusion through worker movement by showing how employees’ technological and collaboration positions affect outward mobility and thus the transfer of know-how across organizations. How does an employee’s centrality in intrafirm research and development activities affect the employee’s propensity for outward mobility? Does this proclivity vary by the type of employment the employee seeks: moving to other firms versus founding a new venture? We maintain that, to answer these questions, we must distinguish between an employee’s centrality in the intrafirm collaboration network and the employee’s centrality in the intrafirm technological recombination network. We utilize the curricula vitae and patent data of corporate inventors at a leading semiconductor company between 1993 and 2012 to test our hypotheses. Contrary to prevailing views, our competing risk model indicates...	Daniel Tzabbar, Bruno Cirillo, Stefano Breschi
8	2014	Sources of Spillovers for Imitation and Innovation ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a focus on how knowledge spillovers arise and transmit across firms, which is central to diffusion, imitation, and innovation. It is likely relevant to worker mobility only indirectly, but the spillover mechanism makes it a good fit for the broader project on technology diffusion and productivity impacts. No abstract available.	Riccardo Cappelli, Dirk Czarnitzki, Kornelius Kraft
8	2024	Do Firms Value Court Enforceability of Noncompete Agreements? A Revealed Preference Approach ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete enforceability, a key labor market friction that can affect worker mobility and thus the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Although it focuses on firms’ revealed preference for enforceable NCAs rather than directly measuring technology spillovers or productivity effects, its evidence on how often firms rely on non-competes is highly relevant to understanding mobility constraints and knowledge transfer. Abstract Do firms value court enforceability of their workers' noncompete agreements (NCAs)? We leverage a 2020 Washington law that made NCAs unenforceable for workers earning less than $100k per year. If firms value the ability to enforce NCAs in court, then they should give just-below threshold workers raises to reach the threshold, resulting in excess mass just above the threshold. Using administrative data, we find no evidence of bunching, even where efficiency arguments are most plausible. A survey of Washington employment attorneys suggests little bunching because firms rarely need to enforce NCAs and because firms can use other, less restrictive alternatives.	Takuya Hiraiwa, Michael Lipsitz, Evan Starr
8	2023	Patent citations and knowledge spillovers: an empirical analysis of Indian patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers using patent citations at the inventor, firm, and technology levels, which is central to understanding how technology diffuses across economic actors. It is less direct on worker mobility and labor market frictions, but its emphasis on foreign inventors, firms, and human capital as channels of spillovers makes it highly relevant background for the project. ABSTRACTThis study uses patent citations data to measure knowledge spillovers at three levels: inventor, firm, and technology. We have collected Indian patents data granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and their backward citations from 1990 to 2019. To conduct our empirical analysis, we apply the Negative Binomial (NB) and Generalised Negative Binomial Model (GNBM). To account for other factors influencing knowledge spillovers, we control for patent inventor size, applicant size, patent scope, and claims. Our findings show that US-origin inventors outperform Indian and European inventors in terms of knowledge spillover from patent citations. Similarly, US firms...	Mohammad Danish, Ruchi Sharma
8	2025	Quid Pro Quo, Knowledge Spillovers, and Industrial Quality Upgrading: Evidence from the Chinese Auto Industry ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies knowledge spillovers in the auto industry and explicitly identifies worker flows as a mediator of technology diffusion, which is central to the project’s focus on labor mobility and knowledge transfer. It also speaks to how firm relationships and market access arrangements affect the direction and quality of diffusion and the resulting productivity/quality upgrading. This paper studies the impact of quid pro quo (technology for market access) in facilitating knowledge spillovers and quality upgrading in the Chinese automobile industry. The identification strategy exploits within-product quality variation across a rich set of quality dimensions. We find affiliated domestic automakers adopt more similar quality strengths of their joint venture partners, consistent with knowledge spillovers. Additional analysis suggests worker flows and supplier networks mediate knowledge spillovers. Knowledge spillovers due to ownership affiliation under quid pro quo contributed 8.3 percent of the quality improvement experienced by affiliated domestic models from 2001 to...	Jie Bai, Panle Jia Barwick, Shengmao Cao, et al.
8	2021	EMPLOYEE MOBILITY AND INNOVATION: THE ROLE OF TURNOVER RATE AND NETWORK CENTRALITY ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee mobility as a channel for innovation, directly matching the project’s focus on worker movement and knowledge diffusion across firms. Its emphasis on turnover rates and mobility-network centrality speaks to how labor flows shape firm innovation, though it is more about firm-level social capital than broader frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. Innovation is crucial to a company’s competitive advantage and employees play an important role in generating innovation within a company. Based on social capital theory, we proposed a new type of social network: the employee mobility network, and explored the impact of employee mobility on innovation. Specifically, we examined the role of both employee turnover rate, and an organisation’s centrality in the employee mobility network in predicting innovation. We collected data from World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Talentale, and Forbes Global 2000 to test our hypotheses. The results showed that turnover rate had a significantly inverted-U curve relationship with innovation...	Holly H. Chiu, Yu‐Qian Zhu, WILSON FONDA
8	2022	R&D Collaborations with Common Partners and Knowledge Leakage to Rivals: The Role of IP Litigation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge diffuses between firms through collaboration networks and how legal/institutional frictions shape the leakage of ideas to rivals. Although it focuses on common R&D partners and patent litigation rather than worker mobility, the mechanisms of spillovers, inter-firm diffusion, and policy-relevant constraints on knowledge transmission align strongly with the project’s themes. While prior studies have suggested that co-location of R&D activities increases the potential knowledge spillovers between rival firms, we emphasize that knowledge leakage can also occur if firms source knowledge through collaborations with the same organizations. We expect that research organization such as universities and research institutions, with their focus on open science, take up a more powerful role as such intermediaries of knowledge spillovers than firms. Focal firms with a more aggressive patent litigation strategy may be able to restrict knowledge leakage through collaboration partners, but this may be more effective if such partners do not adhere to an open science paradigm...	Sarah Edris, René Belderbos, Victor Gilsing
8	2024	Migration and Innovation: How Foreign R&D Hires Shape Firm-Level Exploration in Their Host Country ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how skilled worker mobility, specifically foreign R&D hires, transmits knowledge across borders and shapes firms’ innovative direction. It directly speaks to knowledge diffusion through labor movement, though it focuses more on organizational exploration and international knowledge sourcing than on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility policy. Prior research ascribes an important role to highly skilled immigrants in the production and diffusion of knowledge. However, little is known about their contributions to shaping the type and direction of organizational innovation. We aim to shed light on this question by investigating how newly hired foreign research and development (R&D) workers affect firm-level exploration. We argue that foreign R&D hires enable firms to overcome local search by making them aware of and providing access to novel knowledge tied to their home countries. We test this using a sample of 376 Danish R&D-active firms over the period from 2001 to 2013. Our findings reveal that newly hired foreign R&D workers...	Wolf-Hendrik Uhlbach, Paul‐Emmanuel Anckaert
8	2024	Exploring the impact of inter-organizational knowledge potential difference: an empirical investigation of inventor mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge transfer across organizations, which is central to the project’s focus on how workers diffuse technology and know-how. Its emphasis on inter-firm knowledge differences and the conditions that shape knowledge transfer performance provides useful evidence on the direction and quality of diffusion, though it is less directly about labor market frictions or aggregate productivity effects. The intricate interplay between inventor mobility and its influence on knowledge transfer has captivated the attention of scholars and policymakers. While the significance of individual characteristics in shaping knowledge transfer performance (KTP) is widely recognized, there is limited understanding regarding another vital factor: the knowledge potential difference (KPD) between the original and the recruiting organization. KPD significantly influence how an inventor's knowledge interacts with their environment, ultimately playing a pivotal role in optimizing knowledge exchange, fostering innovation, and informing strategic decision-making. Leveraging data from the European Patent...	Jiajie Wang, Jing Shi, Yitong Chen, et al.
8	2025	Innovation Diffusion Among Coworkers: Evidence from Senior Doctors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies innovation diffusion through coworker and professional networks, using surgeon mobility as an identification strategy to measure how worker movement affects the spread of new practices. It is not a perfect match because the setting is healthcare rather than firms broadly, and it emphasizes peer influence and network structure more than labor market frictions like non-competes or compensation policies. Using a novel 15-year data set on surgeon adoption of a complex surgical innovation in the English National Health Service and an identification strategy based on surgeon mobility, this paper disentangles three channels of coworker influence on innovation diffusion: (1) peer network size, (2) influential “key players,” and (3) cumulative peer adoption. We find that a one standard deviation in peer connections boost innovation by 16%. Key players can either amplify or dampen diffusion, and peer adoption has a greater impact on less experienced individuals. These results highlight the value of targeting training to high impact network members to speed up diffusion. This work advances our...	Eliana Barrenho, Éric Gautier, Marisa Miraldo, et al.
8	2018	The impact of open innovation on employee mobility and entrepreneurship ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how firms’ R&D collaborations affect the mobility of skilled employees and employee entrepreneurship, which is central to knowledge diffusion through labor movement. It is especially relevant for understanding how external knowledge sourcing changes workers’ outside options and leads to spillovers across firms via departures of scientists and engineers. Prior research shows that firms can increase innovation performance by leveraging external sources of knowledge. However, our understanding regarding potential drawbacks of open collaborative approaches for innovation is still limited. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between R&D collaboration and the departure of skilled employees. Scientists and engineers who interact with external partners for innovation may increase their outside options, resulting in higher rates of employee mobility to other firms and employee entrepreneurship. We examine our research question using a representative Panel dataset that combines information from the Swedish Community Innovation (CIS)...	Markus Simeth, Ali Mohammadi
8	2020	When Employees Walk Out the Door, Their Memories Remain: The Effect of Inventor Mobility on Patent Renewal ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a channel of knowledge spillovers across firms and shows how firms respond strategically to protect intellectual property when workers move. Its focus on patent renewal as a deterrent to appropriation complements the project’s interest in how mobility frictions and firm behavior shape technology diffusion and innovation incentives. Abstract Prior research suggests that patents by mobile inventors are at higher risk of generating spillovers between departed and hiring firms. Despite extensive research on how inter-firm inventor mobility affects firms' learning and innovation, little is known about how firms protect their existing intellectual property in the face of inter-firm inventor mobility. We argue that one main way in which firms try to prevent others from appropriating the value of these inventions is by extending the validity of mobile inventors' patents. We derive a set of hypotheses consistent with this argument and test them using longitudinal data on four major American semiconductor firms. Our analyses...	Martin C. Goossen, Gianluca Carnabuci
8	2016	Invisible Constraints: The Relationship among Non-Competition Agreements, Inventor Mobility, and Patent Commercialization ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies non-compete enforcement, inventor mobility, and how mobility affects patent commercialization, which are central mechanisms in your project. Its main contribution is empirical evidence that legal restrictions on movement dampen the productivity gains from mobile inventors, making it highly relevant to questions about labor market frictions and knowledge diffusion. To advance our understanding of the institutional-level influence of intellectual property policies on innovation, this article investigates a set of hypotheses questioning the links between state-level non-competition agreements, inventor mobility, and patent commercialization. It uses US inventor survey data covering a sample of 1, 900 triadic patents. Results provide some evidence in support of the prevalent, yet under-researched, proposition that mobile inventors perform better than non-mobile ones in terms of commercialization activity. This article also finds that the severity of judicial enforcement of non-competition agreements has hampered the positive contribution of inventor...	Hsini Huang
8	2012	Mind the Gap: Capturing Value from Basic Research Boundary Crossing Inventors and Partnerships ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for transferring basic research knowledge into firms, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also highlights how firm-level partnerships with universities complement mobile inventors in improving innovation outcomes, speaking directly to how firms and labor-market links interact to shape technology diffusion and value capture. To successfully generate more valuable technologies from accessing basic research knowledge, firms need to combine institutional and individual level bridges to universities and research institutes active in basic research. This combination is particularly important when the new technology builds on scientific prior art. While mobile inventors are needed to transfer and translate basic knowledge into new technologies, partnerships provide the commitment, resources and incentive structure to integrate this basic research knowledge more effectively into the firm’s innovation process, thus improving the value capture from mobile inventors. Our findings in the micro-electronics field illustrate...	Bruno Cassiman, Reinhilde Veugelers, Sam Arts
8	2018	Learning by Seconding: Evidence from NSF Rotators ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge flows across organizations through temporary worker movements, which is directly in line with the project’s focus on labor mobility as a mechanism for technology and knowledge diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how short-term assignments, rather than permanent moves, can transfer human capital and affect organizational learning, though it may be less directly about non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. We study knowledge flows between organizations through secondments, short-term employee assignments at an organization different from the home institution. Secondments allow the sending organizatio...	Christos Kolympiris, Sebastian mname Hoenen, Peter G. Klein
8	2019	Learning from Coworkers ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies workplace learning and knowledge flows across workers, which is a core mechanism in your project. Its structural approach using matched employer-employee data speaks to how firm composition and labor market interactions shape the diffusion of knowledge and worker compensation, though it is less focused on mobility frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes. We investigate learning at the workplace. To do so, we use German administrative data that contain information on the entire workforce of a sample of establishments. We document that having more highly paid coworkers is strongly associated with future wage growth, particularly if those workers earn more. Motivated by this fact, we propose a dynamic theory of a competitive labor market where firms produce using teams of heterogeneous workers that learn from each other. We develop a methodology to structurally estimate knowledge flows using the full-richness of the German employer-employee matched data. The methodology builds on the observation that a competitive labor market prices coworker...	Gregor Jarosch, Ezra Oberfield, Esteban Rossi‐Hansberg
8	2024	An Anatomy of Monopsony: Search Frictions, Amenities, and Bargaining in Concentrated Markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how off-the-job and on-the-job search frictions shape monopsony power, wage markdowns, and job flows, which are central labor-market mechanisms in worker mobility. While it is not primarily about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its framework for frictions affecting worker sorting and firm power is highly relevant for understanding how mobility constraints can alter the transmission of skills and ideas across firms. We contribute a theory in which three channels interact to determine the degree of monopsony power and therefore the markdown of a worker ’ s spot wage relative to her marginal product: (1) heterogeneity in worker-ﬁ rm-speci ﬁ c preferences (nonwage amenities), (2) ﬁ rm granularity, and (3) off-and on-the-job search frictions. We use Norwegian data to discipline each channel and then reproduce new reduced-form empirical relationships between market concentration, job ﬂ ows, wages and wage inequality. In doing so we provide a novel method for clustering occupations into local labor markets. Our main exercise quanti ﬁ es the contribution of each channel to income inequality and wage...	David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, Andreas Kostøl, et al.
8	2024	Non-compete clauses in employment contracts: The case for regulatory response ↗ This paper is closely related because non-compete clauses are a central labor market friction affecting worker mobility, which is one of the project’s main mechanisms for knowledge diffusion across firms. It also speaks directly to policy responses and their consequences for wages, productivity, and the flow of skilled labor, though it is more of a legal-policy overview than a model or empirical study of technology spillovers. Abstract In the employment context, non-competes are contractual terms which provide that once the employment ends the employee cannot work for another employer in the same industry or field (i.e. a competitor), within a specified geographic area, for a specified time. The existing law and practice regarding non-competes in Australia is plagued with confusion and uncertainty. Non-competes also have adverse economic consequences; they are associated with reduced employee mobility and consequent negative impacts on wages and productivity. The use of non-competes by Australian business has increased over the past 5 years and absent a policy response; this trend is likely to continue...	Iain Ross
8	2020	Growing Pains: The Effect of Labor Mobility on Corporate Investment over the Business Cycle ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it explicitly studies labor mobility and corporate investment, which fits your project’s focus on how worker movement transmits knowledge and affects firm decisions. The business-cycle angle may emphasize macro-financial investment dynamics more than direct technology diffusion, but labor mobility could still be linked to retention, hiring, and spillover effects that matter for innovation and growth. No abstract available.	John Bai, Ashleigh Eldemire-Poindexter, Matthew Serfling
8	2023	New Evidence on Employee Noncompete, No Poach, and No Hire Agreements in the Franchise Sector ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies employee noncompete, no-poach, and no-hire agreements, which are central labor-market frictions affecting worker mobility. The franchise sector context may limit direct evidence on broader inventor or skilled-worker diffusion, but it should still be very useful for understanding how contractual restraints shape mobility and knowledge transfer. No abstract available.	Peter Norlander
8	2021	Traveling waves in a mean field learning model ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a mean-field learning model of knowledge diffusion and economic growth, which is directly tied to how ideas spread across workers and the aggregate productivity effects of that diffusion. It is more theoretical than the project’s focus on labor market frictions and worker mobility, but its balanced growth path and parameter-sensitivity analysis could be useful for understanding the macro implications of knowledge transmission. Abstract Lucas and Moll have proposed in [22] a system of forward–backward partial differential equations that model knowledge diffusion and economic growth. It arises from a microscopic model of learning for a mean-field type interacting system of individual agents. In this paper, we prove existence of traveling wave solutions to this system. They correspond to what is known in economics as balanced growth path solutions. We also study the dependence of the solutions and their propagation speed on various economic parameters of the system.	George Papanicolaou, Lenya Ryzhik, Katerina Velcheva
8	2015	The Growth Dynamics of Innovation, Diusion, and the Technology Frontier This paper is closely related because it studies the interaction between innovation and technology diffusion at the firm level and how these processes shape aggregate productivity growth. It is relevant to the project’s core interest in knowledge diffusion and growth, though it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market frictions such as non-competes or search frictions. Perla and Tonetti (2014) and Lucas and Moll (2014) study technology diffusion in isolation, in environments without the generation of new ideas. Without new ideas, growth cannot continue forever if there is a finite technology frontier. This paper examines, in an economy in which firms choose to innovate, adopt technology, or keep producing with their existing technology, how innovation and diffusion interact to endogenously determine the productivity distribution with a finite, but expanding, frontier. There is a tension in the determination of the productivity distribution - innovation tends to stretch the distribution, while diffusion compresses it. Finally, we analyze the degree to...	Jess Benhabib, Jesse Perla, Christopher Tonetti
8	2014	The Growth Dynamics of Innovation, Diffusion, and the Technology Frontier This paper is closely related because it studies the interaction between innovation and technology diffusion at the firm level and how these forces shape the productivity distribution and aggregate growth. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, but it is highly relevant to the broader question of how knowledge spreads across firms and affects economy-wide productivity. Perla and Tonetti (2014) and Lucas and Moll (2014) study technology diffusion in isolation, in environments without the generation of new ideas. Without new ideas, growth cannot continue forever if there is a finite technology frontier. This paper examines, in an economy in which firms choose to innovate, adopt technology, or keep producing with their existing technology, how innovation and diffusion interact to endogenously determine the productivity distribution with a finite, but expanding, frontier. There is a tension in the determination of the productivity distribution - innovation tends to stretch the distribution, while diffusion compresses it. Finally, we analyze the degree to...	Jesse Perla, Christopher Tonetti, Jess Benhabib
8	2026	Who is using AI to code? Global diffusion and impact of generative AI ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies the diffusion of a new productivity-enhancing technology through workers, showing how adoption varies across developers and countries and how it affects output and skill gaps. While it focuses on generative AI rather than mobility frictions or non-competes, its evidence on uneven technology uptake, worker heterogeneity, and productivity effects is directly informative for knowledge diffusion and labor-market-driven innovation dynamics. Generative coding tools promise big productivity gains, but uneven uptake could widen skill and income gaps. We train a neural classifier to spot artificial intelligence (AI)-generated Python functions in more than 30 million GitHub commits by 160,097 software developers, tracking how fast, and where, these tools take hold. Currently, AI writes an estimated 29% of Python functions in the US-a shrinking lead over other countries. We estimate that quarterly output, measured in online code contributions, consequently increased by 3.6%. AI seems to benefit experienced, senior-level developers: They increased productivity and more readily expanded into new domains of software development. By...	Simone Daniotti, Johannes Wachs, Xiangnan Feng, et al.
8	2020	Shared Culture and Technological Innovation: Evidence from Corporate R&D Teams ↗ [Title only] This paper looks highly relevant because it focuses on corporate R&D teams, where worker interactions and internal mobility are central to how knowledge is created and transferred. The emphasis on shared culture suggests it may study how social frictions or complementarities within teams affect innovation output, which connects closely to mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and firm-level innovation. No abstract available.	Tristan Fitzgerald, Xiaoding Liu
8	2009	Estimating the Employer Switching Costs and Wage Responses of Forward-Looking Engineers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies engineer mobility, switching costs, and wage responsiveness across firms, which are central frictions shaping worker movement and the diffusion of knowledge through labor reallocation. While it does not directly measure knowledge spillovers or technology transfer, its dynamic model of voluntary employer choice and firm wage policies provides useful evidence on how labor market frictions affect the mobility of skilled workers. I estimate the relative magnitudes of worker switching costs and how much the employer switching of experienced engineers responds to outside wage offers. Institutional features imply that voluntary turnover dominates switching in the market for Swedish engineers from 1970--1990. I use data on the allocation of engineers across a large fraction of Swedish private sector firms to estimate the relative importance of employer wage policies and switching costs in a dynamic programming, discrete choice model of voluntary employer choice. The differentiated firms are modeled in employer characteristic space and each firm has its own age-wage profile. I find that a majority of engineers have...	Jeremy T. Fox
8	2024	Differences in On-the-Job Learning across Firms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms differ in the on-the-job learning they provide and how worker mobility across firms reveals portable human capital accumulation. It speaks directly to knowledge and skill diffusion through labor market transitions, though it is more about wage growth and learning heterogeneity than about technology transfer, non-competes, or aggregate innovation effects. We present evidence that is consistent with large disparities across firms in their on-the-job learning opportunities using administrative datasets from Brazil and Italy. We categorize firms into discrete “classes”—which our conceptual framework interprets as skill-learning classes—using a clustering methodology that groups together firms with similar distributions of unexplained wage growth. Mincerian returns to experience vary widely across experiences acquired in different firm classes. Four tests leveraging firm movers, occupation/industry switchers, hiring wages, and displaced workers point toward a portable and general human capital interpretation. Heterogeneous employment experiences...	Jaime Arellano-Bover, Fernando Saltiel
8	2009	The Geography and Co-Location of European Technology-Specific Co-Inventorship Networks ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because technology-specific co-inventorship networks directly relate to how knowledge flows through inventor interactions, which is central to technology diffusion and spillovers. The focus on geography and co-location also speaks to spatial frictions and the role of mobility or proximity in shaping inventive collaboration, though the title does not explicitly mention labor market policies or worker movement. No abstract available.	Julian P. Christ
8	2001	Mobility of research workers and knowledge diffusion as evidenced in patent data: the case of liquid crystal display technology This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventor mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion across firms and organizations, using patent citation data to measure spillovers. It also speaks to policy implications for facilitating or managing technology transfer, though it is focused on one industry rather than broader labor market frictions like non-competes or matching dynamics. This paper analyses the nature of knowledge spillovers from research and development (R&D) in the field of liquid crystal display technology by estimating the impact of inventors' changing organizational and collaborative affiliations on the probability of citations in US patents filed between 1976?1995, while controlling for geographic localization effects. It is argued that technology policy towards a particular industry must take the role of inventors' mobility in facilitating the flow of ideas across space and innovating organizations into account. Policy implications for the display industry are discussed against the background of previous experiences with government-sponsored R&D...	Michael Stolpe
8	2013	“Do labour mobility and technological collaborations foster geographical knowledge diffusion? The case of European regions” This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventor mobility and technological collaboration as channels for geographical knowledge diffusion and innovation across regions. It also examines how these interactions can be quantified and used to model spillovers, which aligns well with the project’s focus on worker mobility-driven technology diffusion and knowledge transfer. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we aim to assess the role played by inventors’ cross-regional mobility and collaborations in fostering knowledge diffusion across regions and subsequent innovation. Second, we intend to evaluate the feasibility of using mobility and co-patenting information to build cross-regional interaction matrices to be used within the spatial econometrics toolbox. To do so, we depart from a knowledge production function where regional innovation intensity is a function not only of the own regional innovation inputs but also external accessible knowledge stocks gained through interregional interactions. Differently from much of the previous literature...	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
8	2024	Do patent assets have a second life when startups fail? An analysis of the redeployment likelihood and mode of transfer ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge embodied in patents and inventors is redeployed after startup failure, directly speaking to technology diffusion through worker mobility. It also examines how market thickness and complementarities between patents and inventor human capital shape whether knowledge transfers with the worker or through asset sales, which fits well with the project’s focus on mobility frictions and knowledge spillovers. Abstract Research Summary Entrepreneurial firms are fertile sources of patented inventions. Yet little is known about what happens to patent assets when startups go out of business: Do the assets have a “second life” through redeployment to new owners? Based on 264 failed VC‐backed startups, we document an active market for the patents both as standalone assets and through co‐movement with inventors to the purchasing organization. We then model and test how the redeployment likelihood and mode of transfer is shaped by trading thickness in the secondary patent market and the degree to which asset value is firm‐specific and tied to the original venture. The study sheds new light on conditions...	Carlos J. Serrano, Rosemarie Ham Ziedonis
8	2006	Between Rights and Contract: Arbitration Agreements and Non-Compete Covenants as a Hybrid Form of Employment Law ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns non-compete covenants and the legal structure governing worker mobility, which are central to how knowledge and technology may move across firms. Even though it sounds more legal than economic, the focus on employment contracts and restraints on movement makes it likely to speak to labor market frictions that affect diffusion and innovation. No abstract available.	Cynthia Estlund
8	2018	Labor Market Immobility and Incentive Contract Design ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a focus on labor market frictions that limit worker mobility, which is central to understanding how knowledge and technology diffuse across firms. The mention of incentive contract design also makes it likely to address how firms respond to immobility through compensation and retention policies, though it may be more broadly about contracting than about innovation specifically. No abstract available.	Chen-Ta Lin, Lai Wei, Nan Yang
8	2023	How Does Geographical Mobility of Inventors Influence Network Formation? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility affects the formation of collaboration ties, which is a key channel for knowledge diffusion across regions and firms. While it focuses more on network formation than on productivity, innovation, or labor market frictions like non-competes, the mechanism of mobile skilled workers bridging separated networks is central to the project. The goal of this paper is to assess the influence of spatial mobility of knowledge workers on the formation of ties of scientific and industrial collaboration across European regions. Co-location has been traditionally invoked to ease formal collaboration between individuals and firms, since tie formation costs increase with physical distance between partners. In some instances, highly-skilled actors might become mobile and bridge regional networks across separate locations. This paper estimates a fixed effects logit model to ascertain precisely whether there exists a ‘previous co-location premium’ in the formation of networks across European regions.	Ernest Miguélez
8	2024	Information frictions and learning dynamics: evidence from tax bunching in Ecuador ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker and intermediary mobility transmit information across firms, which is a central mechanism in your project on knowledge diffusion through labor markets. Although the setting is tax compliance rather than technology adoption, the evidence on learning dynamics, information frictions, and mobility-driven spillovers is directly useful for understanding how movement of workers facilitates diffusion. Abstract We examine how taxpayers learn to minimize personal income tax payments in the context of a rapidly formalizing economy with an expanding tax base. Initially, take‐up of possible generous tax deductions is low among taxpayers in Ecuador who start working in the formal sector. With increasing duration of employment, however, taxpayers become more likely to bunch at the tax exemption threshold using deductions. We exploit rich administrative data on the universe of taxpayers in Ecuador and an event study design to provide causal evidence on the learning mechanisms. We find that the spread of information is driven by the mobility of workers and tax preparers across firms.	Albrecht Bohne, Jan Sebastian Nimczik
8	2020	Absorption of foreign knowledge: the impact of immigrants on firm productivity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how hiring immigrant workers helps firms absorb and apply foreign knowledge, which is directly aligned with worker mobility as a channel for technology diffusion. It also links labor inflows to firm productivity and patenting, making it useful for understanding how skilled-worker movement affects knowledge spillovers and innovation outcomes. Abstract What role do immigrants play in firms’ ability to absorb and apply foreign knowledge? Based on a matched employer–employee dataset from Danish manufacturing firms over the period 2001–2011, this study examines the impact of foreign knowledge accessible by firms’ immigrant employees on firm-level total factor productivity (TFP). We construct various firm-specific absorbable foreign knowledge measures that link firms’ immigrant employees to the technological knowledge base of their country of origin. The empirical results suggest that firms employing immigrant employees have higher firm-level TFP outcomes and a higher probability of new firm-level patent applications. The average...	Jürgen Bitzer, Erkan Gören, Sanne Kruse-Becher
8	2021	Knowledge Spillovers From Superstar Tech-Firms: The Case of Nokia ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for tacit knowledge spillovers from a superstar tech firm to other firms. It directly informs the project’s core themes on inventor/engineer movement, technology diffusion, and the firm performance effects of hiring mobile skilled workers, though it focuses less on policy frictions like non-competes or search costs. Do workers hired from superstar tech-firms contribute to better firm performance? To address this question, we analyze the effects of tacit knowledge spillovers from Nokia in the context of a quasi-natural experiment in Finland, the closure of Nokia's mobile device division in 2014 and the massive labor movement it implied. We apply a two-stage difference-in-differences approach with heterogeneous treatment to estimate the causal effects of hiring former Nokia employees. Our results provide new evidence supporting the positive causal role of former Nokia workers on firm performance. The evidence of the positive spillovers on firms is particularly strong in terms of employment and value...	Fuad Hasanov, Reda Cherif, Jyrki Ali‐Yrkkö, et al.
8	2023	New hires, adjustment costs, and knowledge transfer—evidence from the mobility of entrepreneurs and skills on firm productivity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how hiring mobile knowledge workers, especially former entrepreneurs, affects firm productivity through knowledge transfer and adjustment costs. It speaks directly to the project’s core themes of worker mobility, human-capital spillovers, and the productivity consequences of moving skilled workers across firms, though it is more about hiring rather than broader diffusion frictions or policy restrictions. Abstract This paper evaluates the productivity impacts and the subsequent adjustment costs associated with hiring different knowledge workers. I focus on the difference between hiring former entrepreneurs, employees who change jobs, and unemployed individuals. I am the first to evaluate the direct impact that hiring former entrepreneurs has on firm productivity and the heterogenous adjustment costs associated with the different types of new hires. I find no difference between the first-year adjustment costs of entrepreneurs and those of regular-wage employees. Hiring former entrepreneurs is a way to increase productivity after the first year of employment only if the former entrepreneurs...	Emma Lappi
8	2023	Anti-Poaching Agreements, Innovation, and Corporate Value: Evidence from the Technology Industry ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because anti-poaching agreements directly affect worker mobility, especially in the technology industry where knowledge spillovers and inventor movement are central to innovation. It likely speaks to how labor market restrictions shape innovation outcomes and firm value, which is closely aligned with the project’s themes, though the exact focus on aggregate diffusion or broader equilibrium effects is uncertain. No abstract available.	Daniel Ferrés, Gaurav Kankanhalli, Pradeep Muthukrishnan
8	2012	A Behavioral Perspective on Inventors’ Mobility: The Case of Pharmaceutical Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility across firms, which is central to understanding how worker movement can diffuse knowledge and technology. Its focus is behavioral determinants of mobility in the pharmaceutical industry is more about why inventors move than about the aggregate effects of mobility frictions or policy, but it still provides useful evidence on an important mechanism in the project. Building on existing research on employee mobility, this paper investigates an inventor’s motivation to move and seeks to answer the question of which inventors move. This paper builds on behavioral and prospect theory, particularly, on the literature on managerial risk taking in order to explore the motivational influences on individual mobility across firms in the pharmaceutical industry - specifically how performance deviations from specific reference points (aspirations) explain the likelihood of mobility (a risky action). Our results suggest that when the inventor is performing above her aspiration levels (both historical and social), she is less likely to engage in mobility. For an...	Francesco Di Lorenzo, Paul Almeida
8	2013	"It All Starts with Education: R&D Worker Hiring, Educational Background and Firm Exploration" ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies R&D worker hiring as a mechanism for knowledge exploration and technology search within firms, which is central to worker-driven diffusion and innovation. Its focus on educational background, cognitive distance, and firm-level exploratory search is highly relevant to understanding how mobility affects the direction and quality of knowledge transfer, though it is less directly about labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility policy. R&D worker hiring has been characterized as an important mechanism through which firms search unexplored knowledge areas. In this paper, we examine the role of individuals’ educational background in the association between R&D worker hiring and firm-level exploratory search. Combining Danish employer-employee matched panel data with patent data from the European Patent Office we find that the cognitive distance between R&D recruits and incumbent R&D workers, based on educational background, positively impacts the hiring firm’s subsequent degree of exploratory search. We also hypothesize and find that educational diversity among incumbent R&D workers negatively moderates the relationship...	Arjan Markus, Hans Christian Kongsted
8	2020	A Bibliometric and Topic Modeling Analysis of the Structural Divide in the Multidisciplinary Research on Employee Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly concerns employee mobility, the central mechanism in the project’s study of how workers transfer knowledge and technology across firms. Although it is a bibliometric/topic-modeling review rather than a causal study of mobility frictions or productivity effects, it maps the multidisciplinary literature and identifies gaps relevant to labor-market frictions and knowledge diffusion. Abstract Research on employee mobility has proliferated in the past four decades across four research traditions: Economics, sociology, management, and organizational behavior/human resource management. Despite significant overlap in interest and focus, these four streams of research have evolved independent from each other, resulting in a structural divide. We provide a detailed account of the research on employee mobility and the structural divide across disciplines. We document that the payoff from this profusion of research and increasing interest has been disappointing, as reflected in the limited number of cross-disciplinary citations, even among common topics of interest. However...	Bruno Cirillo, Daniel Tzabbar, Donghwi Seo
8	2020	Left but Not Forgotten: Gender Differences in Networks and Performance Following Mobility ↗ [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it studies mobility directly and focuses on how networks shape post-move performance, which is central to knowledge diffusion through worker movement. The gender-difference angle suggests it may also speak to heterogeneous mobility frictions and the differential transfer of social and professional capital after workers leave firms. No abstract available.	Evelyn Zhang, Brandy Aven, Adam M. Kleinbaum
8	2020	Cross-Border Institutions and the Globalization of Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how cross-border institutions affect technology diffusion, innovation collaboration, and technological convergence, which are central to understanding mechanisms of knowledge spillovers and growth. While it is not primarily about worker mobility frictions like non-competes or on-the-job search, it explicitly identifies human capital mobility as a key channel, making it highly relevant to the project’s broader diffusion-and-frictions framework. We identify strong cross-border institutions as a driver of the globalization of innovation. Using 67 million patents from over 100 patent offices, we introduce novel measures of innovation diffusion and collaboration. Exploiting staggered bilateral investment treaties as shocks to cross-border property rights and contract enforcement, we show that signatory countries increase technology adoption and sourcing from each other; they also increase R&D collaborations. These interactions result in technological convergence. The effects are particularly strong for process innovation, and for countries that are technological laggards or have weak domestic institutions. The mobility of financial...	Bo Bian, Jean‐Marie Meier, Ting Xu
8	2023	Collaboration and Connectivity: Historical Evidence from Patent Records ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how reduced travel costs change inventor collaboration and long-distance knowledge connections, which are central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. While it focuses on railroad access rather than labor market frictions like non-competes or hiring policies, it provides direct historical evidence on the mechanisms through which connectivity facilitates inventive collaboration and technology spread. Why has collaboration become increasingly central to technological progress? We document the role of lowered travel costs by combining patent data with the rollout of the Swedish railroad network in the 19th and early-20th century. Inventors that gain access to the network are more likely to produce collaborative patents, which is partly driven by long-distance collaborations with other inventors residing along the emerging railroad network. These results suggest that the declining costs of interacting with others is fundamental to account for the long-term increase in inventive collaboration.	Thor Berger, Erik Prawitz
8	2024	Noncompete Agreements and the Welfare of Consumers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies noncompete agreements and employee spin-offs, which are central labor market frictions in your project. Its focus is consumer welfare and firm investment incentives rather than technology diffusion per se, but it directly speaks to how mobility restrictions shape worker-driven knowledge transfer and firm behavior. Employee spin-offs harm incumbent firms by increasing competition (benefiting consumers) and preventing firm owners from making beneficial investments in workers who may later spin off (harming consumers). We model noncompete agreements (NCAs) as solutions for the firm and analyze the resulting trade-off for consumers. We show that market structure and the nature of investment play large roles. Counterintuitively, increased investment benefits have the potential to harm consumers such that industries where firms value NCAs the most are those where harm is greater. Finally, we draw two analogies between NCAs and antitrust and show how those areas inform NCA policy. (JEL D42, D43, J41, K21...	Michael Lipsitz, Mark J. Tremblay
8	2024	Teams and Bankruptcy ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility and reallocation through bankruptcy affect the preservation or loss of team-specific human capital, which is central to knowledge diffusion and innovation. It also speaks to how labor market frictions and coordinated movement of collaborators can mitigate productivity losses, making it relevant to the project’s focus on worker mobility, firm dynamics, and innovation outcomes. Abstract We study how the human capital embedded in teams is affected by, and reallocated through, corporate bankruptcies. After a bankruptcy, U.S. inventors produce fewer and less impactful patents. Moreover, teams become less stable. Consequently, compared to inventors that rely less on teamwork, the performance of team inventors deteriorates more. These findings point to the loss of team-specific human capital as a cost of resource reallocation through bankruptcy. Acquisitions by industrial firms and joint mobility of inventors with past collaborations limit these losses, suggesting that the labor market and the market for corporate control help preserve team-specific human capital in...	Ramin Baghai, Rui C. Silva, Luofu Ye
8	2019	The Patent Troll: Benign Middleman or Stick-Up Artist? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how an institutional feature of the patent system affects innovation incentives and the direction of technological progress, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion and productivity. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its analysis of patent transfer, licensing, and downstream innovation provides useful evidence on how IP institutions can shape technology allocation across firms. How do non-practicing entities ("Patent Trolls") impact innovation and technological progress? Although this question has important implications for industrial policy, little direct evidence about it exists. This paper provides new theoretical and empirical evidence to fill that gap. In the process, we inform a debate that has historically portrayed non-practicing entities (NPEs) as either "benign middlemen", who help to reallocate IP to where it is most productive, or "stick-up artists", who exploit the patent system to extract rents and thereby hurt innovation. We employ unprecedented access to NPE-derived patent and financial data, as well as a novel model that guides our data analysis...	David Abrams, Ufuk Akcigit, Gokhan Oz, et al.
8	2017	Network Formation with Local Complements and Global Substitutes: The Case of R&D Networks ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly studies R&D networks, which are a direct channel for technology diffusion, knowledge spillovers, and innovation. The emphasis on network formation and complementarities/substitutes suggests a model of how firms or researchers choose links that can shape the propagation of ideas, though it may be less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions than a title focused on inventors or labor flows. No abstract available.	Chih‐Sheng Hsieh, Michael KKnig
8	2020	Knowledge Diffusion, Trade, and Innovation across Countries and Sectors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion and innovation in an endogenous growth framework, which is central to understanding how ideas spread and affect productivity. However, it focuses on cross-country and cross-sector trade linkages rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention dynamics, so it is related but not directly on the project’s core mechanism. This paper provides a unified framework for quantifying the cross-country and cross-sector interactions among trade, innovation, and knowledge diffusion. This framework is used to study the effect of trade liberalization in an endogenous growth model in which comparative advantage and the stock of knowledge are determined by innovation and diffusion. The model is calibrated to match observed cross-country and cross-sector heterogeneity in production, innovation efficiency, and knowledge spillovers. The counterfactual analysis shows that a reduction in trade costs induces a reallocation of R&D and comparative advantage across sectors. Heterogeneous knowledge diffusion amplifies the...	Jie Cai, Nan Li, Ana María Santacreu
8	2015	On a Boltzmann mean field model for knowledge growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a mean-field model of knowledge growth driven by agent interactions, which is directly connected to diffusion of knowledge across workers and firms. It is more theoretical and does not focus specifically on labor market frictions like non-competes or inventor mobility, but it provides a core framework for understanding how worker interactions can generate aggregate knowledge spillovers and growth. In this paper we analyze a Boltzmann type mean field game model for knowledge growth, which was proposed by Lucas and Moll. We discuss the underlying mathematical model, which consists of a coupled system of a Boltzmann type equation for the agent density and a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation for the optimal strategy. We study the analytic features of each equation separately and show local in time existence and uniqueness for the fully coupled system. Furthermore we focus on the construction and existence of special solutions, which relate to exponential growth in time - so called balanced growth path solutions. Finally we illustrate the behavior of solutions for the full system and the...	Martin Burger, Alexander Lorz, Marie-Thérèse Wolfram
8	2018	Killer Acquisitions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how incumbent firms use acquisitions to redirect or suppress innovation, which affects the diffusion and direction of knowledge across firms. While it is not primarily about worker mobility or labor market frictions, it is highly relevant to the project’s broader questions about firm-level strategic behavior, innovation suppression, and aggregate effects on technological progress. This article demonstrates that incumbent firms acquire innovative targets to discontinue the development of the targets' innovation projects in order to preempt future competition. We call such acquisitions	Colleen Cunningham, Song Ma, Florian Ederer
8	2025	Knowledge spillovers through high-skilled migration network: evidence from OECD countries ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how high-skilled migration acts as a conduit for knowledge spillovers and innovation diffusion across countries, which is central to worker-mobility-driven technology transfer. It is somewhat less direct than firm-level work on non-competes or hiring frictions, but it is highly relevant for understanding the aggregate innovation effects of skilled labor movement and the conditions under which those spillovers are strongest. We investigate the role of international high-skilled migrants in diffusing innovation from origin to destination countries by assessing their impact on the production of knowledge in host countries. Since better innovation performances can be mechanically correlated with a larger presence of high-skilled immigrants, we propose a new identification strategy to account for migrants’ self-selection into the migration network and sort out potential endogeneity bias. Our results, tested on a panel of 20 OECD countries (1987-2016), show that: i) high-skilled migration magnifies the effect of internal knowledge in improving national innovation performances (while middle or low-skilled migration...	Saverio Barabuffi, Valeria Costantini, Valerio Leone Sciabolazza, et al.
8	2013	Les incitations à l'innovation dans le secteur privé ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors’ incentives within firms and explicitly examines inter-firm mobility, showing that wages are higher for inventors who move between firms. Its focus on how firms pay for knowledge brought from other firms speaks directly to worker mobility as a channel of technology and knowledge diffusion, although it is more about compensation than broader diffusion frictions or aggregate productivity effects. L’innovation est devenue un facteur clé de la croissance économique. La question des incitations à l’innovation au sein des entreprises est donc primordiale. Dans ce papier, nous nous intéressons au type d’incitations monétaires reçues par les inventeurs au sein des entreprises avec une attention particulière à la mobilité inter-entreprise de ces derniers. Les résultats montrent un rendement salarial positif pour les inventeurs, celui-ci est plus important pour les inventeurs ayant connu une mobilité inter-entreprise, ce qui pourrait suggérer que les entreprises sont prêtes à payer les connaissances acquises par les inventeurs au sein des autres entreprises. Par contre, l’utilisation de...	Claire Bonnard
8	2024	Models of Wages and Mobility in Frictional Labor Markets with Random Search ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility in frictional labor markets and how search frictions shape wage determination and job allocation, which are central to how labor movement affects knowledge diffusion. While it is more about labor market equilibrium and contracting than technology spillovers or innovation per se, its framework is highly relevant for understanding how mobility costs and restrictions influence the flow of workers across firms. J’étudie les modèles de détermination de l’équilibre des salaires et de la mobilité avec frictions sur le marché du travail. La recherche d’un emploi est aléatoire. La concurrence entre les entreprises se fait en termes de promesses de valeur faites aux travailleurs. La nature exacte de cette concurrence dicte la répartition des promesses de valeur dans l’économie. La mobilité des travailleurs et l’allocation des emplois sont souvent comprises directement à partir de cette partie du modèle. L’étude détaille comment les restrictions sur les contrats de travail traduisent les valeurs des contrats en salaires .	Rasmus Lentz
8	2016	Network Search: Climbing the Job Ladder Faster ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies frictional on-the-job search, worker networks, and job-to-job mobility as mechanisms shaping wage and employment dynamics, all of which connect to how labor market frictions affect worker movement. It is less directly about technology diffusion or inventor mobility, but its network-based search framework is useful for understanding how mobility patterns and matching frictions may influence the spread of knowledge across firms. We introduce an irregular network structure into a model of frictional, on-the-job search in which workers find jobs through their network connections or directly from firms. We show that jobs found through network search have wages that stochastically dominate those found through direct contact. In irregular networks, heterogeneity in the worker's position within the network leads to heterogeneity in wage and employment dynamics: better-connected workers climb the job ladder faster. Despite this rich heterogeneity from the network structure, the mean-field approach allows the problem of our workers to be formulated tractably and recursively. We then calibrate a quantitative version of our...	Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Marcelo Arbex, Dennis O’Dea, et al.
8	2021	Job mobility, reallocation and wage growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies job mobility as a mechanism for reallocating workers across firms and how that affects aggregate wage growth, which speaks directly to labor market frictions and firm-to-firm worker flows. While it focuses more on wages and reallocation than on technology diffusion or inventor mobility specifically, its linked employer-employee evidence is highly relevant for understanding how worker movement shapes the transmission of skills and knowledge across firms. This paper analyses the role of job mobility for job reallocation and aggregate wage growth in Norway and the United States using linked employer-employee data. It provides four main findings. First, despite lower overall job mobility in Norway, the speed of worker reallocation from low-wage to high-wage firms is similar to that in the United States. Second, job reallocation tends to be counter-cyclical in Norway, but pro-cyclical in the United States, due to the weaker tendency of high-wage firms in the United States to hoard workers during economic downturns. Third, the reallocation of workers from low to high wage firms through job-to-job mobility disproportionately benefits high-skilled...	Alexander Hijzen, Wouter Zwysen, Mats Erik Lillehagen
8	2025	Bidding for Talent: A Test of Conduct in a High-Wage Labor Market ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies firm wage-setting power and labor market conduct in a high-wage market, which are central frictions that can shape worker mobility and the incentives for talent poaching. While it does not directly analyze knowledge diffusion or inventor movement, its monopsony/oligopsony framework is highly relevant for understanding how labor market frictions affect hiring, retention, and the flow of skilled workers across firms. We develop a procedure for adjudicating between models of firm wage-setting conduct.Using data from a U.S. job search platform, we propose a methodology to aggregate workers' choices over menus of jobs into rankings of firms' non-wage amenities.We use these estimates to formulate a test of conduct based on exclusion restrictions.Oligopsonistic models incorporating strategic interactions between firms and tailoring of wage offers to workers' outside options are rejected in favor of monopsonistic models featuring near-uniform markdowns.Misspecification has meaningful consequences: our preferred model predicts average markdowns of 19.5%, while others predict average markdowns as large as 26.6%.	Nina Roussille, Benjamin Scuderi
8	2021	How Labor Market Institutions Matter for Worker Compensation ↗ This survey is closely related because it explicitly covers noncompete agreements and labor market concentration, both central frictions in worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. However, it is broader and more policy-oriented than the project’s focus on how mobility specifically transmits technology, affects innovation, and shapes aggregate growth. Labor markets deviate substantially from the competitive ideal, and policies and institutions affect workers’ outcomes. Over the last 45 years, the dramatic increase in compensation of high earners and weak or stagnant growth for low and middle earners have shone a spotlight on the ways in which labor market institutions sometimes work to the detriment of lower-paid workers. In this article, we survey several institutions—minimum wages, private sector unions, noncompete agreements, and occupational licensing—considering how they have evolved in ways that affect workers’ outcomes, given that the labor market is characterized by uneven distribution of market gains. We describe the modern...	Ryan Nunn, Jennifer Hunt
8	2018	Employer Incentives for Providing Informal On-the-job Training in the Presence of On-the-job Search ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how on-the-job search frictions shape employer-provided training, worker retention, and the incentives for firms to invest in human capital. While it focuses on informal general training rather than knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility per se, its mechanisms are highly relevant for understanding how labor market frictions affect skill transfer and productivity growth. We analyze the provision of informal general training in a frictional labor market in which employers cannot commit to training levels and workers cannot commit to stay. We demonstrate that employers’ training decisions are driven by both an investment motive, to improve productivity, and a compensation motive, to increase employee retention. The investment motive decreases with higher wages, while the compensation motive increases. In our calibration exercises, the former dominates, which creates a negative relationship between wages and training. Furthermore, in contrast to recent studies missing the compensation motive, lessening the search frictions raises overall training levels due to...	Seung‐Gyu Sim, Tim Huegerich
8	2021	On the Inefficiency of Non-Competes in Low-Wage Labor Markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements as a labor market friction that affects worker turnover, poaching, and wage dynamics, which are central mechanisms in knowledge diffusion and worker mobility. Although it focuses on low-wage labor markets rather than skilled workers or innovation, its policy analysis of how restricting mobility changes equilibrium outcomes is highly relevant to understanding the effects of mobility constraints on broader economic performance. We study the efficiency of non-compete agreements (NCAs) in an equilibrium model of labor turnover. The model is consistent with empirical studies showing that NCAs reduce turnover, average wages, and wage dispersion for low-wage workers. But the model also predicts that NCAs, by reducing turnover, raise recruitment and employment. We show that optimal NCA policy: (i) is characterized by a Hosios like condition that balances the benefits of higher employment against the costs of inefficient congestion and poaching; (ii) depends critically on the minimum wage, such that enforcing NCAs can be efficient with a sufficiently high minimum wage; and (iii) alone cannot always achieve efficiency...	Tristan Potter, Bart Hobijn, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, et al.
8	2020	Predicting success in the worldwide start-up network ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee flows across start-ups as a mechanism for know-how transfer, which is central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It is less directly about labor market frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes, but it provides useful evidence on how mobility networks shape firm success and innovation ecosystem performance. By drawing on large-scale online data we are able to construct and analyze the time-varying worldwide network of professional relationships among start-ups. The nodes of this network represent companies, while the links model the flow of employees and the associated transfer of know-how across companies. We use network centrality measures to assess, at an early stage, the likelihood of the long-term positive economic performance of a start-up. We find that the start-up network has predictive power and that by using network centrality we can provide valuable recommendations, sometimes doubling the current state of the art performance of venture capital funds. Our network-based approach...	Moreno Bonaventura, Valerio Ciotti, Pietro Panzarasa, et al.
8	2018	Identifying Labor Market Sorting with Firm Dynamics This paper is closely related because it studies job-to-job transitions, firm dynamics, and worker-firm matching in a search-and-matching framework, all of which are central to understanding labor mobility and how workers move across firms. While it does not directly focus on technology diffusion, non-competes, or inventor mobility, its analysis of sorting, mobility frictions, and reallocation effects is useful background for how worker movement shapes firm outcomes and productivity. Studying wage inequality requires understanding how workers and firms match. I propose a novel strategy to identify the complementarities in production between unobserved worker and firm attributes, based on the idea that positive (negative) sorting implies that firms upgrade (downgrade) their workforce quality when they grow in size. I use German matched employer-employee data to estimate a search and matching model with worker-firm complementarities, job-to-job transitions, and firm dynamics. The relationship between changes in workforce quality and firm growth rates in the data informs the strength of complementarities in the model. Thus, this strategy bypasses the lack of identification...	Andreas Gulyas
8	2005	KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS AND HIGH-TECHNOLOGY CLUSTERING: EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN'S HSINCHU SCIENCE-BASED INDUSTRIAL PARK This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers in high-technology industries and links them to the clustering of firms, which is central to understanding how technology diffuses across firms and regions. However, it focuses on spatial and sectoral spillovers in an industrial park rather than the role of worker mobility, labor market frictions, or policies like non-competes, so it is adjacent to but not directly on the project’s main mechanism. Knowledge spillovers of high-technology industries are alleged to be important determinants of industrial clustering. Dynamic production modeling is applied to measure the sectoral and spatial spillover effects to study the implications of various types of knowledge spillovers on high-technology industry clustering in Taiwan`s Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (HSIP). The analysis is performed using the Taiwanese government`s industrial census of technological activities at the micro level with 2340 plants for the period 1986-1995. We find substantive sectoral and spatial knowledge spillover effects, which are considered to be major motivating forces for regional concentration patterns...	An-Hsiou Tsai
8	2008	Labor Pooling in R&D Intensive Industries ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market competition interacts with firms’ R&D decisions and how these dynamics shape agglomeration, productivity, and innovation outcomes. While it does not focus directly on worker mobility frictions like non-competes or inventor turnover, its emphasis on labor pooling in R&D-intensive industries and the resulting effects on knowledge production and welfare makes it highly relevant to the project. We investigate the interplay between firms' R&D decisions and labor market competition, and how this influences equilibrium location choices and welfare. Firms engage in risky R&D activities and thus create stochastic product and implied labor demand. Spatial agglomeration is more likely in situations where the innovation step is large and the probability for a firm to be the only innovator is high. When firms agglomerate, they tend to invest more in R&D compared to spatially dispersed firms. Agglomeration is welfare maximizing, because expected labor productivity is higher and firms choose a more efficient, diversified portfolio of R&D projects at the industry level. The latter aspect is...	Konrad Stahl, Heiko Gerlach
8	2023	Employers’ Associations, Worker Mobility, and Training ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how restrictions on worker mobility via employers’ associations and no-poach agreements affect firm-provided training, directly tying labor market frictions to knowledge and skill accumulation. It is especially relevant to the project’s themes of worker mobility, mobility barriers, and how firms’ training decisions respond to limits on labor movement, though it is less directly about technology diffusion, inventors, or aggregate productivity effects. This paper studies firm-provided training in a context of potential worker mobility. We argue that such worker mobility may be reduced by employers’ associations (EAs) through no-poach agreements. First, we sketch a simple model to illustrate the impact of employer coordination on training. We then present supporting evidence from rich matched panel data, including firms’ EA affiliation and workers’ individual training levels. We find that workers’ mobility between firms in the same EA is considerably lower than mobility between equivalent firms not in the same EA. We also find that training provision by EA firms is considerably higher, even when drawing on within-employee variation and...	Pedro S. Martins, Jonathan Thomas
8	2021	Labor Market Frictions for Female Workers and Corporate Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market frictions affect the allocation and movement of inventive talent and the resulting impact on corporate innovation. Although the focus is on female workers and paid family leave rather than non-competes or inventor mobility per se, it speaks directly to how easing frictions in labor markets can improve knowledge creation and diffusion within firms and industries. I investigate the effect of labor market frictions for female employees on corporate innovation. Following the implementation of state-level paid family leave acts, which exogenously increase female talent allocation by facilitating labor market participation of female inventors, firms headquartered in affected states show significant increases in their innovation relative to unaffected firms. This effect is stronger for firms in innovative industries, for firms with a skilled workforce, for firms in industries with lower labor mobility, for firms in less competitive local labor markets, and for firms with lower female employment. Overall, my results imply that labor market frictions for...	Hyuksoon Lim
8	2009	Scientists on the move: tracing scientists mobility and its spatial distribution This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge spillovers, which is central to understanding technology diffusion across firms and regions. Its focus is primarily descriptive and geographic rather than on labor market frictions or policy effects, but it provides directly relevant evidence on how mobile skilled workers move knowledge. This paper aims to provide new insights into the well-studied phenomenon of knowledge spillovers. We study one of the main mechanisms through which these spillovers occur, that is, the mobility of highly-skilled individuals. In contrast to earlier studies, we focus on the geographical mobility of inventors across European regions. First, we gather information from PCT patent documents (from the OECD REGPAT database, May 2008 edition) and match the names which seemed to belong to the same inventor using name matching algorithms; second, we create a new algorithm to decide whether each patent applied for under each name belongs to the same inventor, according to set of predetermined...	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno Serrano, Jordi Suriñach
8	2016	Inventor Mobility Index: A Method to Disambiguate Inventor Careers ↗ [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it focuses on inventor mobility and on constructing a method to track inventor careers, which is directly useful for studying knowledge diffusion through worker movement. Even if it is primarily methodological rather than causal, a reliable inventor mobility index would be a valuable input for research on spillovers, patenting, firm-to-firm knowledge transfer, and the effects of mobility frictions. No abstract available.	Thorsten Doherr
8	2017	Global Collaborative Patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility within firms and cross-border collaboration as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion, which is central to how worker movement transfers technology across locations and organizations. It also speaks to how firm strategy and intellectual property environments shape the direction and exploitation of knowledge spillovers, though it is more focused on international patent collaboration than labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions. We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new foreign region for innovative work, especially in settings where intellectual property protection is weak. We also connect collaborative patents to the ethnic composition of the firm’s U.S. inventors and cross-border mobility of inventors within the firm. The inventor team composition has important consequences for how the new knowledge is exploited within and outside of the firm.	Sari Pekkala Kerr, William Kerr
8	2020	The Effects of Non-Compete Agreements on Different Types of Self-Employment: Evidence from Massachusetts and Utah ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements as a labor market friction that shapes worker mobility and entrepreneurial entry, which is central to the project’s focus on how restrictions on movement affect knowledge diffusion. Its main outcome is self-employment rather than direct technology spillovers or inventor mobility, but the evidence that loosening non-compete enforceability increases incorporated entrepreneurship is highly relevant to understanding firm creation, worker reallocation, and innovation incentives. The economic effects of non-compete agreements have received increasing attention from academics and policymakers. This paper investigates how non-compete policies affect different types of self-employment. We exploit policy reforms in Utah and Massachusetts in 2016 and 2018, which decreased the enforceability of non-compete covenants, as quasi-experiments. We separate self-employment into self-employment with incorporated businesses (as a proxy for entrepreneurship) and self-employment with unincorporated businesses. Using representative individual-level data from the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey, we estimate the probability of being self-employed with these...	Ege Can, Frank M. Fossen
8	2018	The Evolving Antitrust Treatment of Labor-Market Restraints: From Theory to Practice ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because labor-market restraints are a central policy channel affecting worker mobility, which is one of the project’s core mechanisms for knowledge diffusion and spillovers. The antitrust perspective suggests it may discuss non-compete agreements, hiring restrictions, and related frictions, though the focus may be more legal and policy-oriented than directly about innovation or productivity models. No abstract available.	Randy Stutz
8	2015	U.S. CEO Employment Agreements and Non-Competition Provisions: A Literature Survey ↗ [Title only] This literature survey is likely highly relevant because non-competition provisions and CEO employment agreements are directly tied to labor mobility restrictions, a core mechanism in the project. Even though it focuses on CEOs rather than engineers or inventors, it should provide useful evidence on how contractual frictions affect retention, diffusion of firm-specific knowledge, and potentially innovation incentives. No abstract available.	Randall S. Thomas, Norman Bishara
8	2010	Education Policy and Tax Competition with Imperfect Student and Labor Mobility (Revised Version, Feb. 2010) ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it explicitly studies student and labor mobility, which directly connects to how mobility frictions shape sorting, human capital allocation, and potentially the diffusion of skills across locations or firms. The focus on education policy and tax competition suggests a broader regional/public finance setting rather than firm-level knowledge spillovers, but labor mobility remains central enough to make it strongly connected to the project. No abstract available.	Tim Krieger, Thomas Lange
8	2023	Endogenous technology cycles in dynamic R&D networks ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion through R&D collaborations, endogenous network formation, and the resulting effects on technology creation and innovation dynamics. While it does not focus on worker mobility, non-competes, or labor market frictions, it is highly relevant for understanding firm-level mechanisms of spillovers and aggregate innovation patterns. We study the coevolutionary dynamics of knowledge creation and diffusion with the formation of R&D collaboration networks. Differently to previous works, we do not treat knowledge as an abstract scalar variable, but rather represent it as a multidimensional portfolio of technologies. Over time the composition of this portfolio may change due innovations and knowledge spillovers between collaborating firms. The collaborations between firms, in turn, are dynamically adjusted based on the firms' expectations of learning a new technology from their collaboration partners. We show that the interplay between knowledge diffusion, network formation and competition across sectors can give rise to a...	Michael König, Tim Rogers
8	2024	Star recruitment and internationalization effects: an analysis of the Alexander von Humboldt professorship programme ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how attracting high-profile foreign scientists affects international knowledge flows within host institutions, a direct example of worker mobility as a channel for diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how recruiting star researchers can alter collaboration networks and the inflow of high-quality talent, though it focuses more on internationalization than on labor market frictions like non-competes or mobility costs. Abstract We investigate the impact of policies aimed at attracting foreign-based star scientists on the internationalisation of host institutions. In particular, we examine the case of the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (AvHP) programme, which—since 2008—offers substantial funding to top scholars willing to move from abroad to a German university. Based on a difference-in-differences approach, we test whether the university departments that recruit an AvHP recipient increase the number of internationally co-authored publications and the recruitment of new, high-quality researchers from abroad. Results are very heterogeneous across broad scientific fields, with a significant and...	Massimiliano Coda Zabetta, Francesco Lissoni, Ernest Miguélez
8	2024	Knowledge spillovers from superstar tech firms: the case of Nokia ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for tacit knowledge spillovers, using the large-scale movement of skilled workers from Nokia to other firms. It speaks directly to how hiring mobile workers affects firm performance and technology diffusion, though it is more focused on firm outcomes than on broader labor market frictions or policy mechanisms like non-competes. Do workers hired from superstar tech-firms contribute to better firm performance? To address this question, we analyze the effects of tacit knowledge spillovers from Nokia in the context of a quasi-natural experiment in Finland, the closure of Nokia’s mobile device division in 2014 and the massive labor movement it implied. We apply a two-stage difference-in-differences approach with heterogeneous treatment to estimate the causal effects of hiring former Nokia employees. Our results provide new evidence supporting the positive causal role of former Nokia workers on firm performance. The evidence of the positive spillovers on firms is particularly strong in terms of employment and value...	Jyrki Ali‐Yrkkö, Reda Cherif, Fuad Hasanov, et al.
8	2024	Customer Capital Spillovers: Evidence from Sales Managers in International Markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for transferring relationship-specific capital and expanding firms’ market access, which is analogous to labor-mediated diffusion of valuable intangible assets. Its evidence on job-to-job transitions, spillovers to competitors, and firm-level gains from recruiting experienced workers speaks directly to how mobility shapes knowledge and advantage across firms, even though the focus is customer capital rather than technology or invention. Expanding their customer base is crucial for firms to grow. This paper leverages sales managers' job-to-job transitions to better understand how buyer-seller relationships form. Combining unique French firm-to-firm trade data with matched employer-employee data, we perform an event study analysis that exploits the timing of sales managers' transitions from one firm to another for identification. We find recruiting a sales manager increases by 36 percent the probability to export to the buyers of her former firm. The expansion of the firm's customer base is detrimental to the buyer's former suppliers. Yet business stealing is partial; job-to-job transitions are not zero-sum. (JEL D12, D22...	Bérengère Patault, Clémence Lenoir
8	2018	Markets for (Codified, Tacit, Encapsulated, and Firm-Specific) Knowledge ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly focuses on markets for different forms of knowledge, which is central to how worker mobility can transmit ideas across firms. The distinction between tacit and firm-specific knowledge is especially important for understanding labor market frictions, knowledge diffusion, and spillovers, though the title alone does not confirm a direct focus on non-competes or inventor mobility. No abstract available.	Brian S. Silverman
8	2020	A Critical Discussion of the Empirical Issues in Employee Mobility Research ↗ This chapter is closely related because it focuses on employee mobility as a driver of outcomes for individuals, firms, industries, and economies, which is central to studying knowledge diffusion through worker movement. While it is primarily a methodological and empirical issues review rather than a direct analysis of non-competes, inventor mobility, or productivity spillovers, it is useful background for researching how mobility is measured and identified in this literature. Abstract The past few decades have witnessed a phenomenal progress in our understanding of employee mobility as a critical driver and consequence of various outcomes for individuals, organizations, industries, and economies. In the process, researchers have tackled several important issues in conducting empirical research on employee mobility. This chapter provides a critical discussion of the extant literature focusing on five broad areas: identification of mobility, timing of mobility, outcomes of mobility and their operationalization, model identification, and other related issues. In doing so, this article identifies some of the empirical choices and methodologies adopted in prior...	Jeong-Sik Lee
8	2015	Mobility of ideas for innovation: The role of inventor-specific knowledge flows This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility transmits knowledge across firms and affects innovation performance, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement as a channel for technology diffusion. It also speaks to firm-level knowledge spillovers and agglomeration externalities, though it is more about inventor-specific knowledge flows than about labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions. Our data from 351 innovating firms for the years 2001–2012 generally suggest that patentable ideas are strongly linked to the mobility of individual inventors, or that the knowledge flows transmitted are sticky inventor-specific. In other words, the larger the knowledge pool of an inventor entering (leaving) the firm, the more the firm’s innovation performance increases (decreases). However, our separate estimations for six different technology classes suggest that this does not apply for all technologies. Our data indicate that the knowledge flows are mobile inventor-specific for chemicals and pharmaceuticals and mechanical engineering such that the mobility of an inventor to a firm...	Heli Koski, Mika Pajarinen
8	2018	Knowing Me, Knowing You: Inventor Mobility and the Formation of Technology-Oriented Alliances ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility from competitors and how that movement facilitates technology diffusion through subsequent collaborative alliances. It speaks directly to the project’s themes of skilled worker movement, knowledge transfer, and firm-level mechanisms of innovation spillovers, though it focuses more on alliance formation than on broader labor market frictions or aggregate productivity effects. We link the hiring of research and development scientists from industry competitors to the subsequent formation of collaborative agreements, namely technology-oriented alliances. By transferring te...	Stefan Wagner, Martin C. Goossen
8	2014	Engineer/Scientist Careers: Patents, Online Profiles, and Misclassification Bias ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it centers on engineer/scientist careers and uses patents, which are directly tied to inventor mobility, innovation, and knowledge diffusion. The focus on online profiles and misclassification bias suggests it may improve measurement of worker career paths and moves, which is useful for studying how labor market frictions shape the transmission of technology across firms. No abstract available.	Chunmian Ge, Ke‐Wei Huang, Ivan Png
8	2021	The Effects of Knowledge Distance and Knowledge Complexity on Learning From Hiring ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies learning-by-hiring as a mechanism for transferring knowledge across firms through worker movement, which is central to the project’s focus on mobility-driven diffusion. Its emphasis on how knowledge distance, complexity, and firm knowledge refinement shape the gains from hiring is also relevant for understanding the direction and quality of knowledge spillovers and firm-level innovation outcomes. Hiring employees from high-performing rivals is a common channel for transferring knowledge and enhancing firm’s capabilities. But while the literature on learning-by-hiring posits that new knowledge can be a powerful source of improvement and rejuvenation for a firm’s knowledge stock, evidence for whether firms actually benefit from hires with knowledge that is very distant from their own is mixed. With the help of a computational model, we explore how the knowledge distance of a new hire shapes the benefits of learning-by-hiring. The analysis of the model allows us to reconcile opposite findings and predictions found in the literature and provides further nuance to our understanding of...	Dong Nghi Pham, Luis A. Rios, Maciej Workiewicz
8	2021	Noncompete agreements in employment contract ↗ This paper is closely related because noncompete agreements are a central labor market friction in the project’s study of worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It speaks directly to how restrictions on movement affect training, investment, wages, and job mobility, though it is more policy-oriented and less focused on spillovers, inventor flows, or aggregate innovation outcomes. Economic theory suggests noncompete agreements have the potential to increase productive investments, but can also harm workers. Empirical evidence is similarly dichotomous, consistent with greater worker training and rates of corporate investment, but lower wages and job mobility on average. Though the harmful effects are often most salient, policymakers should aim to balance regulation that protects workers while still allowing the benefits of noncompetes in some contexts. Regulatory options include noncompete wage floors, transparent information requirements, and matching the timing of payments for noncompetes with the work restriction period.	Kurt Lavetti
8	2020	Idea Diffusion and Property Rights ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion, idea transfer, and how property rights affect innovation incentives, which map directly to the project’s focus on knowledge spillovers and diffusion. However, it is more industry-dynamics and property-rights oriented than specifically about worker mobility, labor market frictions, or inventor movement, so it is not a perfect core match. We study innovation and diffusion of technology at the industry level. We derive an industry's evolution, from birth to its maturity, and we characterize how diffusion affects the incentive to innovate. The model implies that protection of innovators should be only partial due to the congestion externality in the meetings in which idea transfers take place. We fit the model to the early experiences of the automobile and the personal computer industries, both of which show S-shaped growth of the number of firms.	Boyan Jovanovic, Zhu Wang
8	2024	Non-Compete Agreements and the Market for Corporate Control ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how non-compete enforcement changes managers’ outside options and affects labor mobility constraints, a central mechanism in your project. While its outcome focus is the market for corporate control rather than knowledge diffusion or innovation directly, it is highly relevant for understanding how mobility frictions alter firm behavior and the allocation of human capital. Non-compete agreements (NCAs) limit outside employment options and, therefore, increase personal costs of job displacement for managers. Using state-level changes in NCA enforceability as a natural experiment, we find that managers are more averse to horizontal takeovers when NCA enforcement tightens. In particular, higher enforceability is associated with fewer takeovers. Those that do materialize are more likely to be hostile, involve higher premiums	Andrey Golubov, Yuanqing Zhong
8	2024	Monopsony Power in the Labor Market ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on labor market frictions, especially search frictions and noncompetition agreements, that shape workers’ ability to move between employers. While it is broader than knowledge diffusion specifically, its discussion of policies that reduce barriers to job switching and affect employer competition is highly relevant to how worker mobility influences technology and knowledge transfer. Labor markets are not perfectly competitive: Monopsony power enables employers to pay workers less than the marginal revenue product of labor. We review three theoretical frameworks explaining monopsony power. Oligopsony models attribute it to strategic interactions among a limited number of firms. Job differentiation models cite imperfect job substitution and heterogeneous worker preferences. Search-and-matching models point to search frictions hindering instantaneous access to all available jobs. We then develop a theory-informed discussion of the empirical evidence on antitrust policies, policies that reduce barriers to job switching, and policies countering monopsony's effects on...	José Azar, Ioana Elena Marinescu
8	2025	Local Labor Markets and Corporate Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how local labor market structure and worker mobility affect firm innovation, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion through labor movement. It also touches on mechanisms highly relevant to the project, including outside job opportunities, coworker-based spillovers, employee incentives, and IP ownership arrangements that shape how mobility translates into innovation. Abstract We construct a measure ( fLMA ) of the extent to which neighboring firms hire similar types of workers, based on the similarity between the labor profile of a firm and that of its locality. We show that a firm’s innovation is positively related to fLMA. The enhanced labor mobility induced by higher fLMA is an important channel for this positive relation. This relation is stronger when firms have increased outside job opportunities for employees, increased knowledge spillovers via coworkership, and more employee stock options. Innovation is higher when intellectual property ownership is with employers, not employees. This effect increases in fLMA.	Jiang Cheng, Kose John, Kyeong Hun Lee, et al.
8	2019	Labor Mobility and Capital Misallocation in the Mutual Fund Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility frictions, specifically non-compete enforcement, and their effects on the allocation of talent across firms. Although the setting is mutual fund managers rather than inventors or engineers, the paper directly speaks to how mobility restrictions impede efficient matching, reduce reallocation of skilled labor, and lower aggregate value added. This paper studies how fund managers' mobility across mutual fund firms affects the efficiency in the allocation of capital across managers. To overcome the endogeneity of fund managers' mobility, I exploit exogenous shocks to managers' ability to change employer via state-level legislation changes increasing the enforceability of non-compete agreements. I find that these policy changes lead to a reduction by half of the propensity of fund managers to switch mutual fund firms along with an increase in capital misallocation across managers by roughly 30% as well as a decline in value added of managers by more than $110 million at the state level. These results suggest that the labor market...	Maxime Bonelli
8	2022	Knowledge Similarity Among Founders and Joiners: Impact on Venture Scaleup in Fintech and Lawtech ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a study of how knowledge overlap between founders and later joiners affects firm growth, which is closely related to knowledge transfer through worker movement and hiring. Its focus on scaleup in fintech and lawtech makes it especially relevant to mechanisms of human capital diffusion, though it may be more about startup growth and team composition than broader labor-market frictions or policy. No abstract available.	Mari Sako, Matthias Qian, Mark D. Verhagen
8	2024	The Creativity Decline: Evidence from US Patents ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies invention quality, patent creativity, and the link between patenting and firm productivity, all of which matter for understanding how knowledge diffuses through the economy. While it does not center on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its endogenous growth and imitation framework provides useful context for how the composition of inventive activity affects diffusion and aggregate productivity. Economists have long struggled to understand why aggregate productivity growth has dropped in recent decades while the number of new patents filed has steadily increased.I offer an explanation for this puzzling divergence: the creativity embodied in US patents has dropped dramatically over time.To separate creative from derivative patents, I develop a novel, text-based measure of patent creativity: the share of technical terminology that did not appear in previous patents.I show that only creative and not derivative patents are associated with significant improvements in firm level productivity.Using the measure, I show that inventors on average file creative patents upon entry, and file...	Aakash Kalyani
8	2024	More Trade, Less Diffusion: Technology Transfers and the Dynamic Effects of Import Liberalization ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly studies technology transfers and diffusion in the context of import liberalization, which is central to understanding how knowledge spreads across firms and economies. While it does not directly mention worker mobility or labor market frictions, the diffusion and transfer mechanisms could closely relate to your project’s themes of technology dissemination and aggregate productivity effects. No abstract available.	Gustavo de Souza, Ruben Gaetani, Martí Mestieri
8	2023	A mean field game model of firm-level innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies firm-level innovation and knowledge spillovers, which are central to the project’s interest in technology diffusion and productivity growth. However, it focuses on spillovers through an interacting-firm network rather than worker mobility or labor market frictions, so it is more about diffusion mechanisms in general than the specific channels emphasized in the project. Knowledge spillovers occur when a firm researches a new technology and that technology is adapted or adopted by another firm, resulting in a social value of the technology that is larger than the initially predicted private value. As a result, firms systematically under-invest in research compared with the socially optimal investment strategy. Understanding the level of under-investment, as well as policies to correct it, is an area of active economic research. In this paper, we develop a new model of spillovers, taking inspiration from the available microeconomic data. The model developed is a mean field game model, which allows for heterogeneity in the productivity of a firm and allows...	Matt Barker, Pierre Degond, Ralf Martin, et al.
8	2019	On Balanced Growth Path Solutions of a Knowledge Diffusion and Growth Model ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a formal model of knowledge diffusion and economic growth driven by imitation, search, and innovation, which maps directly onto the project’s focus on how worker learning and mobility transmit knowledge across agents. It is less directly about labor-market frictions like non-competes or firm-level hiring decisions, but its results on when imitation sustains growth and how diffusion dynamics shape balanced growth are highly relevant to the project’s theoretical core. In this paper, we study a Boltzmann-type mean field game model proposed in Achdou et al. [Philos. Trans. A, 372 (2014), pp. 1--19] for knowledge diffusion and economic growth, where knowledge diffusion results from imitation by searching and learning and from innovation subject to Brownian noises. Largely inspired by Dai et al. [SIAM J. Control Optim., 48 (2009), pp. 1134--1154; J. Econom. Theory, 146 (2011), pp. 1598--1630; J. Differential Equations, 246 (2009), pp. 1445--1469], where the marginal value function has been used directly to study portfolio selection with transaction costs, we transform the original partial integro-differential equation system into an equivalent one by also...	Cong Qin, Xinfu Chen
8	2022	Great Recession Babies: How Are Startups Shaped by Macro Conditions at Birth? ↗ This paper is closely related because it examines how macro conditions at birth affect startup outcomes through the behavior of critical R&D workers, which speaks directly to worker retention and the role of skilled labor in innovation performance. It is especially relevant for understanding how labor market conditions shape knowledge creation and diffusion within firms, even though it does not focus on mobility frictions like non-competes or inventor movement across employers. <span>We propose a novel identification strategy to estimate the long-term imprinting effects of being born in the Great Recession on innovative startups. After purging ubiquitous selection biases and sorting effects, we find that recession startups experience substantially better long-term outcomes in terms of survival and growth in employment and sales, despite being born when funding is scarce and demand is declining. In contrast to prior work, we find that the recession does not encourage entry into entrepreneurship as job prospects dim; instead, it discourages exit by critical R&D workers who help recession startups out-innovate and out-perform expansion startups.</span>	Daniel Bias, Alexander Ljungqvist
8	2025	Efficiency in Job-Ladder Models ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies job-ladder models with on-the-job search, a key labor market friction that shapes worker mobility and the reallocation of matches, which is central to how knowledge can diffuse across firms. While it does not focus on technology spillovers or inventor mobility directly, its analysis of efficiency, vacancy creation, and market frictions provides useful theory for understanding how mobility constraints affect aggregate outcomes and firm dynamics. This paper examines the efficiency of a decentralized equilibrium in a broad class of random-search job-ladder models.We decompose the source of inefficiency into two margins: (i) the investment margin, that is, the difference between the private and social benefit of job creation given the surplus of a match, and (ii) the valuation margin, that is, the difference between the private valuation and the social valuation of a match surplus.In the presence of on-the-job searches, the well-known Hosios condition no longer guarantees the market equilibrium aligns with the efficient allocation along both margins.On-the-job searches contribute to the overvaluation of the match surplus in market...	Masao Fukui, Toshihiko Mukoyama
8	2024	Employer Market Power in Silicon Valley ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a labor market friction—no-poaching agreements—that directly limits worker mobility, a central mechanism in the project’s diffusion of knowledge through labor flows. While the focus is more on wages and employer market power than on innovation outcomes or spillovers, Silicon Valley is a highly relevant setting for understanding how restrictions on movement can affect the reallocation of skilled workers and potentially slow technology diffusion. Adam Smith alleged that employers often secretly combine to reduce labour earnings. This paper examines an important case of such behavior: no-poaching agreements through which information-technology companies agreed not to compete for each other’s workers. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous timing of a US Department of Justice investigation, I estimate the effects of these agreements using a difference-in-differences design. Data from Glassdoor permit the inclusion of rich employer- and job-level controls. On average the no-poaching agreements reduced salaries at colluding firms by 5.6%, consistent with considerable employer market power. Stock bonuses and job satisfaction were also...	Matthew Gibson
8	2025	Worker Beliefs About Outside Offers, Wage Setting, Wage Dispersion, and Sorting ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it centers on worker outside offers, which are tightly connected to on-the-job search, mobility frictions, and how firms respond through wage setting. The emphasis on wage dispersion and sorting also fits the project’s focus on labor market frictions shaping worker movement and the allocation of talent across firms, though it may be more about labor-market dynamics than direct technology diffusion. No abstract available.	Junjie Guo
8	2018	Spinoffs and Clustering ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on spinoffs as a mechanism through which innovation and knowledge created inside firms diffuses into new firms and regions. Although it does not directly study worker mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs, its model of clustering through parent-to-spinoff location and innovation dynamics is highly relevant to knowledge transfer, firm dynamics, and aggregate growth. Geographic clustering of innovative industries is associated with the entry and success of spinoff firms. We develop a model to explain the multiple empirical patterns regarding cluster growth and spinoff formation and performance, without relying on agglomeration externalities. Clustering naturally follows from spinoffs locating near their parents. In our model, firms grow and spinoffs form through the discovery of new submarkets based on in-novation. Rapid and successful innovation creates more opportunities for spinoff entry and drives a region’s growth. Our model provides baseline estimates of levels of agglomeration that can be attributed to this process of innovation and spinoff...	Russell Golman, Steven Klepper
8	2016	The Value of Entrepreneurial Failures: Task Allocation and Career Concerns This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market frictions shape task assignment, learning about comparative advantage, and the value of entrepreneurial experimentation, all of which connect to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Its focus is more on career concerns and talent discovery within firms than on direct technology spillovers or inventor mobility, but the mechanism linking mobility frictions to information creation and entrepreneurial activity is highly relevant. The task assignment that maximizes present expected output is not necessarily the most informative about an agent's comparative advantage at different tasks. Entrepreneurs are free to choose their task assignment-workers in firms are not. When labor market frictions are low, any surplus generated by a more informative task as- signment is captured by the worker, and firms maximize present expected output in their task assignment. Hence, agents may choose entrepreneurship to learn their comparative advantage. The opposite holds when labor market frictions are large. The model establishes a causal relation between the degree of labor market frictions, the value of entrepreneurial failures...	Andrea Canidio, Patrick Legros
8	2021	tyleransom/frictions-JHR: Replication files for Journal of Human Resources ↗ This replication package is directly tied to a paper on labor market frictions and moving costs, which are central to understanding how mobility barriers shape worker movement and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. While it is more focused on migration and employment transitions than on technology diffusion or innovation outcomes per se, it is highly relevant as a core mechanism in the project. Contains code and data for replication of "Labor Market Frictions and Moving Costs of the Employed and Unemployed" by Tyler Ransom, forthcoming in <em>Journal of Human Resources</em>.	Tyler Ransom
8	2016	Patterns and determinants of inventors' mobility across European urban areas This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion across places, which is central to understanding how skilled-worker movement spreads technology and innovation. Its analysis of job opportunities, social networks, and proximity as determinants of mobility also speaks directly to labor-market frictions and the forces shaping the direction and intensity of knowledge flows. Highly skilled professionals are regarded as one of the main driver for the economic development of cities through their effect on innovative capabilities. Skilled individuals are mobile in space and tend to cluster within a limited number of urban areas, therefore a crucial question is what factors shape this flows and influence the divergent levels of economic development across urban areas. Building on these considerations, this paper takes advantage of a large-scale dataset to shed light on the patterns and determinants of inventors' mobility across European urban areas. First, a descriptive analysis is carried out to document the dynamics of inventors' mobility and their spatial...	Clément Gorin
8	2021	Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility This paper is closely related because it examines impediments to inventor mobility and how institutional restrictions at universities affect the movement of knowledge embodied in inventors. It is especially relevant to the project’s themes of labor market frictions, human capital transfer, and the diffusion of technology through worker mobility, though it is more focused on legal and academic-institutional issues than aggregate productivity or firm dynamics. Academic inventors must overcome numerous obstacles when they seek to leave their parent universities. The results of their work are often intertwined in what I call "innovation-essential components," which are important aspects of the. innovative process that create strong ties to the parent university, such as data, patents, trade secrets, grants, contracts, materials, and other agreements and restrictions. Innovation-essential components effectively bind university inventors to their parent institutions, making departure unworkable without the university's approval. Universities sometimes further complicate inventor mobility by entering into unlawful agreements with other academic...	Brenda M. Simon
8	2010	Prolific inventors: who are they and where do they locate? Evidence from a five countries US patenting data set This paper is closely related because it studies prolific inventors and directly links their productivity to interfirm and international mobility, which are central mechanisms in technology and knowledge diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how worker movement affects inventive output, though it focuses more on inventor productivity than on broader firm dynamics, frictions, or aggregate growth effects. The prolific (serial) inventors set up the core of the paper. Prolific inventors tend to have a high productivity in terms of inventions (patents) having in general more economic value. The capacity to produce a lot of inventions (patents) is termed “prolificness”. We want to deepen our knowledge about the size of their population, some of their main characteristics, the factors that explain the number patents applied. We exploit a rich data set built onto information available released by the US Patent and Trade Mark Office (USPTO) for the five more important countries as far as technological activities are concerned: Great-Britain, France, USA, Germany, Japan over a long time period...	Christian Le Bas, Riad Bouklia-Hassane
8	2019	Turning Wisconn Valley into the Next Silicon Valley: Reforming Wisconsin Non-Compete Law to Attract High-Tech Employers This paper is closely related because it focuses on non-compete agreements as a labor market friction that affects employee retention in high-tech industries, which is central to how worker mobility influences knowledge diffusion. Its emphasis is on attracting and retaining employers rather than directly measuring spillovers or productivity effects, so it is more policy-oriented background than a direct study of diffusion dynamics. The July 2017 arrival of Taiwanese tech-giant Foxconn and the establishment of the Wisconn Valley Science and Technology Park in Wisconsin reflects a larger trend in the United States to reinvent the nation’s manufacturing economy with high-tech production. High-tech employers have substantial interests in retaining employees in order to protect their valuable proprietary information and market share. Non-compete agreements, also known as restrictive covenants or covenants not to compete, are often the legal device used to secure these interests. This Comment argues that to attract and retain employers in the tech industry, Wisconsin should reform its non-compete law by adopting new...	Kelly Krause
8	2025	America’s Rise in Human Capital Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a paper about changes in worker mobility over time, likely with a focus on how the United States developed more fluid labor markets and how that affected knowledge and skill diffusion. It is highly relevant to the project’s themes of human capital mobility and labor market frictions, though the title alone does not guarantee a direct focus on firm-level spillovers, non-competes, or innovation outcomes. No abstract available.	Lukas Althoff, Harriet Brookes-Gray, Hugo Reichardt
8	2023	Where Have All the 'Creative Talents' Gone? Employment Dynamics of US Inventors ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies the employment dynamics of US inventors, a core group for understanding how skilled-worker mobility transmits knowledge across firms. Even without an abstract, the title suggests direct relevance to inventor mobility, talent allocation, and the diffusion of innovation through labor market movements. ,	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
8	2025	Good Rents versus Bad Rents: R&D Misallocation and Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how innovation spillovers affect the direction of R&D and aggregate growth, which is central to understanding knowledge diffusion across firms. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its analysis of reallocating research toward firms with larger knowledge spillovers is highly relevant to the project’s broader diffusion and productivity questions. Firm price-cost markups may reflect (a) bigger step sizes from quality innovations that confer significant knowledge spillovers onto other firms, and/or (b) higher process efficiency than competing firms or other factors which bear no obvious knowledge externality.We write down an endogenous growth model with innovation step size and process efficiency as alternative sources of markup heterogeneity.Compared with the laissez-faire equilibrium, the social planner wants to reallocate research towards high step size firms but not high process efficiency firms.We then use price and productivity data across firms in French manufacturing to infer firm step sizes and process efficiency.We find that...	Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Timo Boppart, et al.
8	2018	The Productivity Effects of Worker Mobility Between Heterogeneous Firms ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility between firms affects establishment productivity, which is central to understanding labor-mediated knowledge diffusion and spillovers. Although it focuses more on productivity effects and job-matching than on policy frictions like non-competes, it provides useful evidence on how inflows of workers from heterogeneous firms shape firm performance and the direction of mobility. Abstract We analyze the effect of worker inflows on establishments’ productivity, using German data. Previous studies for other countries have found positive effects of hiring workers from superior (more productive or higher paying) firms. Ranking establishments by their median wage, we find that inflows from inferior establishments seem to increase hiring establishments’ productivity. Further empirical analyses suggest our findings are due to a positive selection of such inflows from their sending establishments. These workers might have to find a better job match in order to advance their careers, an interpretation supported by the finding that the effect is driven by workers with short...	Bastian Stockinger, Katja Wolf
8	2019	Employee diversity attributes of productivity and real remuneration spillover impacts of employee migration to smaller firms in the South African workplace ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies employee migration as a channel for productivity and remuneration spillovers across firms, which is central to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It is especially useful for understanding how moving workers from larger to smaller firms can transfer embodied know-how, though it focuses more on productivity spillovers than on formal technology diffusion, non-competes, or inventor mobility. Orientation: This study is part of an ongoing research project on various dimensions of labour productivity in the South African workplace. Research purpose: The aim of this article was to determine the magnitude of employee migration to smaller firms in the South African workplace and the directional impact of this migration on employee productivity and real remuneration levels when different employee diversity attributes are considered. Motivation for the study: The study focussed on understanding why the migration of employees from bigger and more labour productive firms can have a positive employee productivity spillover effect on smaller firms. Research design, approach and method: Two...	Gerhardus Van Zyl
8	2019	Worker mobility and productivity spillovers: An emerging market perspective ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies productivity spillovers transmitted through worker mobility using matched employer-employee data, which is central to the project’s focus on knowledge diffusion across firms. Its emerging-market setting and discussion of skill deficits and firm-level training also provide useful evidence on how labor market frictions and human capital constraints shape the direction and quality of technology transfer. This paper uses matched employer-employee data from South Africa to examine the extent to which technology transfers between firms through the hiring of workers. Allowing for differential spillovers based on observable technology differences between sending and receiving firms, we find strong evidence for positive productivity spillovers through worker mobility. In contrast to previous studies set in more advanced economies, our results suggest that negative spillovers can occur. Firms that hire workers from less productive firms experience a decline in productivity in the following year compared with similar firms that do not hire any workers. This, we suggest, may be explained by the high...	Ayanda Hlatshwayo, Friedrich Kreuser, Carol Newman, et al.
8	2021	Knowledge Spillovers From Superstar Tech-Firms: The Case of Nokia ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility from a superstar tech firm as a mechanism for tacit knowledge spillovers, using a quasi-natural experiment created by Nokia’s downsizing. It directly speaks to how skilled-worker movement affects firm performance and knowledge diffusion, though it is more focused on empirical spillovers than on labor market frictions or policy interventions like non-competes. Do workers hired from superstar tech-firms contribute to better firm performance? To address this question, we analyze the effects of tacit knowledge spillovers from Nokia in the context of a quasi-natural experiment in Finland, the closure of Nokia’s mobile device division in 2014 and the massive labor movement it implied. We apply a two-stage difference-in-differences approach with heterogeneous treatment to estimate the causal effects of hiring former Nokia employees. Our results provide new evidence supporting the positive causal role of former Nokia workers on firm performance. The evidence of the positive spillovers on firms is particularly strong in terms of employment and value...	Jyrki Ali‐Yrkkö, Reda Cherif, Fuad Hasanov, et al.
8	2023	A structural study of Big Tech firm-switching of inventors in the post-recession era ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies inventor mobility across firms and its role in knowledge diffusion and innovation within major tech companies. It provides empirical evidence on how firm-switching inventors affect patent networks, network fragmentation, and patent impact, which speaks to the project’s core themes of worker mobility and innovation spillovers. Complex systems research and network science have recently been used to provide novel insights into economic phenomena such as patenting behavior and innovation in firms. Several studies have found that increased mobility of inventors, manifested through firm switching or transitioning, is associated with increased overall productivity. This paper proposes a novel structural study of such transitioning inventors, and the role they play in patent co-authorship networks, in a cohort of highly innovative and economically influential companies such as the five Big Tech firms (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta) in the post-recession period (2010--2022). We formulate and empirically...	Yidan Sun, Mayank Kejriwal
8	2014	Foreign Market Experience, Learning by Hiring and Firm Export This paper is closely related because it studies how hiring workers with prior experience transfers foreign-market knowledge across firms, which is a form of labor-mediated knowledge diffusion. While the focus is on export entry rather than technology or invention, it directly engages with worker mobility, learning by hiring, and firm-level knowledge spillovers through employee movement. Export experience of managers and other top specialists is among the key drivers of export decisions in firms. We show evidence of this regularity based on employer-employee level data from the manufacturing industry in Estonia. We find that hiring managers and other high-wage employees with prior experience in exporting to a specific geographical region is associated with a higher probability of export entry to that region. However, there is little evidence of significant effects on export intensity. Notably, the relationship between export experience and a firm’s export decisions is usually stronger if the prior export experience is from an exporter that is located nearby in the product...	Jaan Masso, Kärt Rõigas, Priit Vahter
8	2014	Innovation, Productivity, and Training This paper is closely related because it studies how firm-sponsored training increases human capital, innovation, and productivity, which are central outcomes in understanding knowledge accumulation and diffusion inside firms. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, but it is useful background on a key channel through which firms build and transfer knowledge that can affect broader diffusion dynamics. The firm's stock of human capital is an important determinant of its ability to innovate. As such, any increase in this stock through firm-sponsored training might lead to more innovation. We test this hypothesis using detailed data on firms' human capital investments and innovation performance, the Canadian longitudinal linked employer-employee data from 1999-2006. Our results, with workplace fixed-effects and allowing for time-varying productivity shocks, demonstrate that more training leads to more product and process innovation, with on-the-job training playing a role that is as important as classroom training. We then demonstrate that on-the-job training has a positive impact on...	Benoît Dostie
8	2025	The innovation exodus: how Türkiye’s brain drain challenges technological progress ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the emigration of highly educated workers affects innovation and R&D capacity, which directly speaks to the role of skilled worker mobility in technology diffusion and growth. While it focuses on brain drain at the country level rather than firm-level knowledge transfer or specific labor market frictions like non-competes, it is highly relevant to the broader mechanism of how worker movement shapes technological progress. <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17.6px;">Brain drain refers to the emigration of highly educated individuals to other countries in pursuit of better professional, academic, or economic opportunities. This phenomenon differs from human capital, which denotes the proportion of university graduates within the total domestic population and reflects the overall skill level and innovation potential of the resident workforce. This study examines the long-run effects of brain drain on technological advancement in Türkiye, using annual data from 1990 to 2022. By employing Fourier ADL and RALS Fourier ADL cointegration techniques, the study...	Faruk Mike, İbrahim Ethem Akyıldız, Murat Doğanlar, et al.
8	2024	Firm Risk, Liquidity Risk, and Unemployment Insurance Benefits: The Roles of Innovation and Inventors ↗ [Title only] This title looks closely related because it links firm risk, liquidity risk, and unemployment insurance to innovation and inventors, which are central to understanding how worker mobility and inventive activity affect knowledge diffusion and firm outcomes. Even though it does not explicitly mention mobility frictions or spillovers, inventors and innovation suggest a meaningful connection to the project’s themes of labor-market incentives, retention, and the allocation of talent across firms. No abstract available.	Yen-Ju Hsu, Woan-lih Liang, Yi-Chun Tsai, et al.
8	2025	Employee Mobility Barriers: An Integrative Review Across Careers, Human Resources, and Strategic Management Research ↗ This review is closely related because it centers on barriers to employee mobility, which are a core mechanism in the project’s study of how frictions like non-competes and other constraints shape knowledge diffusion across firms. It is especially useful for framing firm responses and categorizing mobility frictions, though it is broader and more integrative than a paper directly testing effects on technology diffusion, innovation, or aggregate productivity. The ability of employees to move between firms of their own volition is a defining characteristic that distinguishes human capital from other resources. This review bridges previously isolated research communities by synthesizing knowledge on “employee mobility barriers”—mechanisms that restrict employee movement and help firms maintain human capital-based competitive advantages. We introduce a typology of ten categories of employee mobility barriers, differentiated by level of analysis (individual, organizational, societal) and degree of firm control, to organize the disparate literature on this topic. Building on this foundation, we propose an architecture of strategic modes that...	Lauren E. Aydinliyim, Deepak Somaya
8	2012	How to capture value from linking to science-driven basic research: Boundary crossing inventors and partnerships ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor movement across organizations helps transfer science-based knowledge into firms, which is central to worker mobility as a conduit for technology diffusion. It also speaks to the productivity and innovation effects of such mobility and partnerships, though it is more about access to basic research than labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. Surprisingly little is known about the actual process of how firms engage in accessing and translating science-driven basic knowledge and turning this into improved applied research productivity. We study this process focused around a research corporation in the microelectronics and semiconductor industry. We show that firms which have a partnership with the research organization where at the same time inventors cross from the research organization into the firm develop higher quality technologies drawing on the basic research knowledge from the research organization. These same firms also spend more effort internally developing these initial technologies into more applied technologies...	Bruno Cassiman, Reinhilde Veugelers, Sam Arts
8	2021	Effective Recruitment of Engineers From Other Companies: Whether to Pull Individuals or Teams? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies “learning by hiring” as a mechanism of knowledge diffusion through engineer mobility, which is central to the project’s focus on how worker movement transfers technology across firms. It is especially relevant for understanding how hiring strategies affect the strength of spillovers, though it is narrower in scope because it focuses on cross-border recruitment in the electronics industry rather than broader labor market frictions or policy effects. This study empirically analyzes effective conditions for cross-border “learning by hiring” in the electronics industry. Many previous studies have indicated that the mobility of engineers serves as a conduit for knowledge diffusion and that knowledge is more likely transferred when the geographical distance is short, that is, when the conduit is short. However, the relationship between conduit thickness and density and the knowledge spillover effect has only rarely discussed. The findings of this study suggest that it is more effective to hire multiple people simultaneously for learning by hiring from companies in other countries.	Ayano Fujiwara, Toshiya Watanabe
8	2022	Firm decline and the mobility of US inventors, 1976–2015 ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a response to firm decline, directly speaking to how worker movement reallocates innovative talent across firms and locations. It also sheds light on the role of local economic diversity in retaining inventors after shocks, which is relevant to how labor market conditions shape knowledge diffusion and innovation outcomes. Because innovation is a key driver of economic growth, the mobility of inventors is one important consideration for firms and policy makers. While considerable research examines the factors that influence inventor mobility in general, this research traces US inventors in response to firm decline. Using regression to model inventors’ probability of patenting in a new firm or moving to a new city, I find that the most skilled and well-connected inventors have the easiest transition after leaving a struggling company, but they are also most likely to move away to seek re-employment. After the decline of a major firm, inventors are less likely to move away from cities with more diverse regional...	Melissa Haller
8	2019	Immigration and Inventor Productivity ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because inventor productivity is directly linked to the mobility and composition of skilled labor, and immigration is a major channel through which talent moves across firms and countries. While it may focus more on immigrants’ individual productivity than on spillovers, hiring, and diffusion frictions, it likely speaks to how worker movement affects innovation output and knowledge transfer. No abstract available.	Gabriele Pellegrino, Orion Penner, Étienne Piguet, et al.
8	2018	Entrepreneurial Spillovers from Corporate R&D ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how corporate R&D affects employee mobility and the formation of startups, which is a direct channel for knowledge diffusion across firms. It also speaks to spillovers, inventor/worker movement, and the reallocation of ideas and skills into new ventures, though it focuses more on entrepreneurial spinouts than on frictions like non-competes or labor-market matching. This paper offers the first study of how changes in corporate R&D investment affect labor mobility. We show that increases in R&D spur employee departures to join start-ups’ founding teams. This appears to reflect employees taking the ideas, skills, or technologies created through the R&D process but not especially valuable to the R&D-investing firm to start-ups. The employee-founded start-ups tend to be outside the R&D-investing employer’s industry, suggesting that the underlying ideas would impose diversification costs on the R&D-investing firm. The start-ups are more likely to be VC backed, high tech, and high wage, pointing to substantial spillover benefits.	Tania Babina, Sabrina T Howell
8	2025	Measuring the characteristics and employment dynamics of U.S. inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it builds a rich dataset on U.S. inventors and their employment dynamics, which is directly useful for studying inventor mobility, employer transitions, and how knowledge may move across firms. While it does not itself analyze non-competes, search frictions, or diffusion mechanisms, it provides foundational evidence and infrastructure for examining those questions. Innovation is a key driver of long-run economic growth. Studying innovation requires a clear view of the characteristics and behavior of the individuals who create new ideas. A general lack of rich, large-scale data has constrained such analyses. We address this by introducing a new dataset linking patent inventors to survey, census, and administrative microdata at the U.S. Census Bureau. We use this data to provide a first look at the demographic characteristics, employer characteristics, earnings, and employment dynamics of inventors. These linkages, which will be available to researchers with approved access, dramatically increase the scope of what can be learned about inventors and...	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
8	2018	Note on Idea Diffusion Models with Cohort Structures ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies idea diffusion models, which are central to understanding how knowledge spreads across workers and firms and how frictions in meeting/search processes affect growth. Although it is more theoretical than focused on worker mobility, the cohort and meeting-process structure speaks directly to mechanisms relevant for diffusion, matching, and endogenous growth. In this note I propose two alternative frameworks to study idea diffusion models with cohort structures. Both frameworks fix the Lucas (2009) aggregation mistake while keeping the analytical tractability of the model and its insights. The frameworks differ in their assumptions on the meeting process. I study first a continuous arrival process where agents meet at each point in time, and then a more commonly used Poisson process where meeting opportunities arrive stochastically at some given Poisson rate. I generalize the growth formula in Lucas (2009) and show that both models yield the same growth rate on a balanced growth path. Moreover, I show that the continuous arrival process can be...	Santiago Caicedo
8	2021	Innovation Networks and Business-Stealing ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor collaboration and how concerns about business stealing shape the formation of innovation networks, which directly affects knowledge diffusion through worker interactions. Its focus is not primarily on labor mobility or non-competes, but the inventor-level patent data and mechanism of collaboration suppression after breakthroughs are highly relevant to understanding how frictions alter the spread of ideas across firms. We use the universe of US Patent and Trademark Ofﬁce (USPTO) data on patents and inventors from 1976 to 2017 to look at how inventors potential concern for business-stealing affects coauthorship on patents. First, we ﬁnd an inverted-U shape in the fraction of coauthors that an inventor has per year who are new as a function number of other inventors also working in an inventor’s ﬁeld. Second, we ﬁnd that after a breakthrough invention, an inventor brings in persistently fewer than usual new coauthors. Third, a higher potential concern for business stealing—as measured either by the number of others working or the average price markups by ﬁrms in the area—leads to a higher drop in the...	Philippe Aghion, Matthew O. Jackson, Antoine Mayerowitz, et al.
8	2024	Economics at the FTC: Non-Horizontal Mergers, the CARS Rule, and the Non-Compete Rule ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it directly discusses the FTC’s non-compete rule, which is central to labor market frictions that affect worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also provides policy and economic analysis of competition enforcement that can shape firm behavior, hiring, retention, and the broader diffusion of technology through labor markets. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces federal competition and consumer protection laws that prevent anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices, and works to advance government policies that protect consumers and promote competition. The FTC’s Bureau of Economics performs economic analysis to support the enforcement, rulemaking and policy activities of the Commission. This article discusses several examples of these activities. We first discuss analysis of non-horizontal effects of mergers, as reflected in the 2023 Merger Guidelines and in recent cases. Next, we discuss the economic analysis conducted by the FTC’s economists in two recent rules. We discuss the CARS...	Alison Hole, Michael LeGower, Michael Lipsitz, et al.
8	2025	Outside Employment Opportunities and Tournament Incentives ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how noncompete enforceability constrains executive mobility and how firms adjust compensation incentives in response, directly linking labor market frictions to worker movement. While it focuses on executive tournament pay rather than technology diffusion or innovation spillovers, the mobility mechanism is central to the project’s interest in how restrictions on outside options shape firm behavior and knowledge flows. Abstract We find that firms enlarge the executive pay gap when executive mobility is constrained by more enforceable noncompete agreements. We interpret this finding as evidence that firms increase tournament incentives to keep executives incentivized after the loss of valuable outside employment options. Consistent with this argument, we observe more significant increases in pay gaps for executives with greater ex ante mobility options. However, shocks reducing enforceability have a weaker, less robust impact on pay gaps, contributing to asymmetric effects. Following restrictions to mobility, equity portfolios that long (short) firms that boost (do not boost) executive pay gaps generate...	Yue Feng, Amedeo De Cesari, Konstantinos Stathopoulos
8	2024	Beyond One Size Fits All: A Judicious Perspective on Noncompete Agreements ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on noncompete agreements, a key labor market friction in your project, and discusses their effects on wages, entrepreneurship, and innovation. It is mainly a perspective or review rather than a direct empirical study of worker mobility and knowledge diffusion, but it is useful for framing the policy and research gaps around mobility restrictions. Amid the recent global trend toward restricting noncompete agreements (NCAs), we assess and identify critical research gaps in the NCA literature, notably the scarcity of NCA studies outside the United States and the scarcity of research on NCAs’ organizational-level effects. Furthermore, we pinpoint areas of ambiguous evidence, such as NCAs’ influence on wages, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Our in-depth analysis reveals the need for more research using multiple data sources to navigate the complexities of NCA use in diverse legal and cultural landscapes. Highlighting the literature’s significant gaps, we argue for a judicious stance toward NCAs, emphasizing the need for cautious...	Cassandra Torgnes, Siri Terjesen
8	2021	Non-compete Agreements, Wages and Efficiency: Theory and Evidence from Brazilian Football ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements as a labor market friction that affects worker mobility, wages, and turnover, which are central to your project. Although the setting is Brazilian football rather than skilled workers or inventors, its structural analysis of how restricting movement changes earnings and efficiency is directly relevant to understanding the economic effects of mobility constraints. We propose a model to study non-compete agreements and evaluate their quantitative effects. We explore an exogenous policy change that removed non-compete clauses in the market for Brazilian footballers, the Pele Act of 1998. The Act raised players’ lifetime income but changed the wage profile in a heterogeneous way, reducing young players’ salaries. We structurally estimate the model’s parameters by matching wages and turnover profiles in the post Act period. By changing a single parameter related to the non-compete friction, we can match the changes in the age-earnings profile. We then show that the bulk of income gains is due to distributional forces, with efficiency gains playing a...	Bernardo Guimarães, João Paulo Pessoa, Vladimir Ponczek
8	2023	Outside Employment Opportunities and Tournament Incentives ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how noncompete enforceability constrains executive mobility and how firms respond by changing compensation to preserve incentives, directly linking labor-market frictions to worker movement. It is especially relevant for understanding how mobility restrictions affect firm behavior, compensation design, and the allocation of outside opportunities, though it focuses more on executive tournaments than on broader knowledge diffusion or innovation spillovers. We find that firms enlarge the executive pay gap when executive mobility is constrained by more enforceable noncompete agreements. We interpret this finding as evidence that firms increase tournament incentives to keep executives incentivized after the loss of valuable outside employment options. Consistent with this argument, we observe more significant increases in pay gaps for executives with greater ex ante mobility options. However, shocks reducing enforceability have a weaker, less robust impact on pay gaps, contributing to asymmetric effects. Following restrictions to mobility, equity portfolios that long (short) firms that boost (do not boost) executive pay gaps generate positive...	Yue Feng, Amedeo De Cesari, Konstantinos Stathopoulos
8	2025	Monopsony and Non-Competitive Labour Markets: Workers' Weakening Bargaining Position ↗ This report is closely related because it focuses on labor market frictions that reduce worker mobility, especially non-compete clauses and employer concentration, which are central mechanisms in the project. It speaks directly to how restricted outside options weaken bargaining power and lower mobility, though it is more about wages and labor market power than about the diffusion of technology, invention, or productivity spillovers per se. This report provides an overview of labour market monopsony by delving into two of its sources which deliver unilateral firm wage setting power; namely, concentrated labour markets and the use of anticompetitive contractual instruments such as non-compete clauses. These sources limit workers’ outside options and thereby increase the bargaining power of employers over workers, resulting in reduced wages and worse working conditions for the workers affected, and higher wage inequality. First, in labour markets with fewer employers and fewer outside options for workers, there is greater scope for labour market monopsony power. Indeed, based on a meta-analysis of studies on labour market...	Wouter Zwysen
8	2019	Big Fish in Small Ponds: Human Capital Mobility and the Rise of Boutique Banks ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility transfers human capital across firms and changes firm performance, which is central to the project’s focus on mobility-driven knowledge diffusion. Although it is set in M&A advisory rather than invention or technology production, it provides strong evidence on how the movement of high-quality employees and their networks can reallocate capabilities and reshape industry outcomes. Over the past two decades, the M&A advisory industry has seen an increasing presence of boutique banks, whose market share reached over 40% in 2018. In this paper, we examine whether and how labor mobility contributes to the rise of boutique M&A advisors. Using several novel datasets containing deal-advising history and career paths of individual investment bankers, we show that high-performing individuals are more likely to migrate from their large, bulge bracket employers to boutique banks. Following their transition, the performance of losing (gaining) banks deteriorates (improves) in the specialized industries of these individuals. To establish causality, we exploit the cross-department...	Janet Gao, Wenyu Wang, Xiaoyun Yu
8	2022	A Spanner in the Works: Restricting Labor Mobility and the Inevitable Capital-Labor Substitution ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how restricting labor mobility changes firm behavior, specifically through monopsony power, turnover costs, and substitution away from labor toward capital. It is especially relevant to the project’s interest in non-compete-style frictions and the broader effects of mobility restrictions on innovation, although its main outcome is capital-labor adjustment rather than direct knowledge diffusion. We model an environment with overlapping generations of labor to show that policies restricting labor mobility increase a firm's monopsony power and labor turnover costs. Subsequently, firms increase capital expenditure, altering their optimal capital-labor ratio. We confirm this by exploiting the statewide adoption of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD), a law intended to protect trade secrets by restricting labor mobility. Following an IDD adoption, local firms increase capital expenditure (capital-labor ratio) by 3.5 percent (5.5 percent). This result is magnified for firms with greater human capital intensity. Finally, IDD adoptions do not spur investment in either R&D or growth...	Bharadwaj Kannan, Roberto Pinheiro, Harry J. Turtle
8	2025	Automation, AI, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker assignment and workplace interactions transmit tacit knowledge, which is central to diffusion of know-how across firms and generations. It also uses incomplete contracts and endogenous growth to show how technology changes can strengthen or weaken knowledge diffusion, making it highly relevant to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and productivity effects, though it is not specifically about mobility across firms or non-competes. Motivated by concerns that AI-driven entry-level automation may deprive new generations of valuable work experience, this paper studies how technological change affects the intergenerational transmission of tacit knowledge -- practical, hard-to-codify skills acquired through workplace interaction. I develop a task-based overlapping-generations model in which novices acquire tacit knowledge by working alongside experts. Knowledge-transfer contracts are incomplete because tacit knowledge is embodied and non-verifiable. In equilibrium, endogenous growth arises because only the most knowledgeable experts manage production and transmit their expertise to multiple novices, diffusing best...	Enrique Ide
8	2016	An Assignment Model of Knowledge Diffusion and Income Inequality ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge diffusion through worker-like assignment of learners to more productive knowledge holders, which is central to understanding how mobility and matching shape technology transfer. It also speaks to growth, inequality, and the allocation of human capital, though it does not directly focus on labor market frictions like non-competes, inventor mobility, or firm hiring policies. Randomness in individual discovery tends to spread out productivities in a population, while learning from others keeps productivities together. In combination, these two mechanisms for knowledge accumulation give rise to long-term growth and persistent income inequality. This paper considers a world in which those with more useful knowledge can teach those with less useful knowledge, with competitive markets assigning students to teachers. In equilibrium, students who are able to learn quickly are assigned to teachers with the most productive knowledge. The long-run growth rate of this economy is governed by the rate at which the fastest learners can learn. The income distribution reflects...	Erzo G. J. Luttmer
8	2015	Wage Dispersion with Heterogeneous Wage Contracts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility, on-the-job search, and how firm wage-setting frictions shape hiring, retention, and labor market transitions. While it is not primarily about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its heterogeneous contract framework is useful for understanding how mobility frictions can affect the movement of workers who may carry knowledge across firms. I study a labor market in which identical workers search on- and off-the-job and heterogeneous firms employ using either posted wages or wage contracts contingent on outside options. Firm level costs for contingent contracts generate a separating equilibrium in which less productive firms post wages. The model with heterogeneous contracts can achieve wage dispersion, labor share, employment transitions, and flow value of unemployment that are simultaneously consistent with empirical observations even when most firms post wages. Using German employee-level administrative data, I estimate roughly 70 percent of firms post wages and employ nearly 50 percent of workers under such contracts.	Cynthia L. Doniger
8	2020	Jacks of All Trades and Masters of One: Declining Search Frictions and Unequal Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how search frictions in labor markets affect productivity growth through better worker-job matching, which is central to understanding labor market frictions and the movement of workers. It does not focus directly on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, but it provides an important mechanism for how easing mobility/search frictions can raise aggregate productivity and create heterogeneous effects across worker types. Declining search frictions generate productivity growth by allowing workers to find jobs for which they are better suited. The return of declining search frictions on productivity varies across different types of workers. For workers who are "jacks of all trades"-in the sense that their productivity is nearly independent from the distance between their skills and the requirements of their job' declining search frictions lead to minimal productivity growth. For workers who are "masters of one trade"-in the sense that their productivity is very sensitive to the gap between their individual skills and the requirements of their job-declining search frictions lead to fast productivity growth. As...	Paolo Martellini, Guido Menzio
8	2025	How do Multinationals Impact China's Technology? The Role of Quid Pro Quo Policy and Technology Spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through multinational affiliates and documents spillovers and transfers of patented knowledge to domestic firms, which is central to understanding how ideas spread across firms and countries. However, it focuses more on multinational production and policy subsidies than on worker mobility or labor market frictions as the mechanism for diffusion. ABSTRACT Using comprehensive patent data, we document: (1) multinational affiliates and their foreign parent firms comprise a significant portion of patents filed in China; and (2) there are subsequent transfers and spillovers of these technologies to domestic firms. Guided by this evidence, we develop a model of multinational production featuring cross‐country idea flows, transfers, and spillovers. Quantitatively, we find that without multinational production and knowledge spillovers, the idea stock owned by China would drop by 30%. Furthermore, due to the externalities of multinationals through technology transfers and spillovers, subsidizing multinationals will at most increase real...	Xiao Ma, Yiran Zhang
8	2026	Firm networks and global technology diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firm networks and multinational linkages channel cross-country technology diffusion, which is central to understanding how knowledge moves across firms and places. It is not directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but the use of job-posting data and firm-to-firm linkages makes it highly relevant for the broader diffusion and innovation mechanism in the project. This paper examines how multinational firms and global value chain linkages facilitate the cross-country diffusion of emerging technologies. Leveraging detailed data on online job postings across 17 countries and multinational firm linkages from 2014 to 2022, we analyze the propagation of jobs related to emerging technologies through firm networks. Our findings reveal that emerging technology jobs are highly concentrated within multinational firms and their supply chains, with nearly one-third of postings from Fortune 500 firms, their affiliates, buyers, suppliers, or innovation partners. Although related job openings initially cluster in locations where technologies originate, this...	Paulo Bastos, Katherine Stapleton, Daria Taglioni, et al.
8	2022	Do indigenous or foreign innovation efforts matter for the middle-income economies transition to the higher-income rank? An empirical evidence ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how innovation diffuses across countries through foreign channels such as patents, FDI spillovers, and imports, which speaks to knowledge transfer and the mechanisms behind productivity growth. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it is useful for understanding broader diffusion processes and how different channels matter for development transitions. This study analyzes whether indigenous or foreign innovation efforts are more important for the transition of middle-income economies to the higher-income rank. Data on 61 countries in both lower middle-income and upper middle-income categories between 1980 and 2018 are used. Discrete-time hazard models are employed. The unobserved heterogeneity is controlled in the estimations to improve the continuous-time hazard model applied in existing studies on innovation at the national level. Results show that foreign sources of innovation measured by nonresident patents and international R&D spillovers through the FDI channel are more important for the lower middle-income group to move up the...	Huong Thu Ngo
8	2018	Team-Specific Capital and Innovation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors, co-inventor teams, and how accumulated team-specific human capital affects innovation outcomes. While it does not directly focus on labor market frictions or worker mobility, it speaks to the mechanisms through which knowledge is embedded in teams and potentially lost or disrupted when workers leave. We establish the importance of team-specific capital in the typical inventor's career. Using administrative tax and patent data for the population of US patent inventors from 1996 to 2012, we find that an inventor's premature death causes a large and long-lasting decline in their co-inventor's earnings and citation-weighted patents (−4 percent and −15 percent after 8 years, respectively). After ruling out firm disruption, network effects, and top-down spillovers as main channels, we show that the effect is driven by close-knit teams and that team-specific capital largely results from an “experience” component increasing collaboration value over time. (JEL J24, J31, M54, O31, O34)	Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, Alex Bell
8	2020	Fencing Off Silicon Valley: Cross-Border Venture Capital and Technology Spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology spillovers between firms and countries, with a clear mechanism through which financing relationships can transmit knowledge. However, it focuses on cross-border venture capital rather than worker mobility or labor market frictions, so it is adjacent to the project’s core labor-based diffusion channel rather than directly on point. The treatment of foreign investors has been a contentious topic in U.S. entrepreneurship policy in recent years. This paper examines foreign corporate investments in Silicon Valley from a theoretical and empirical perspective. We model a setting where such funding may allow U.S. entrepreneurs to pursue technologies that they could not otherwise, but may also lead to spillovers to the overseas firm providing the financing and the nation where it is based. We show that despite the benefits from such inbound investments for U.S. firms, it may be optimal for the U.S. government to raise their costs to deter investments. Using as comprehensive as possible a sample of investments by non-U.S...	Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates, Josh Lerner, et al.
8	2020	Fencing Off Silicon Valley: Cross-Border Venture Capital and Technology Spillovers ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies cross-border venture capital as a channel for technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers, directly aligning with the project’s focus on how information moves across firms and borders. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it is highly relevant for understanding alternative mechanisms of knowledge transfer and the policy tradeoffs around restricting flows that may facilitate spillovers. The treatment of foreign investors has been a contentious topic in U.S. entrepreneurship policy in recent years. This paper examines foreign corporate investments in Silicon Valley from a theoretical and empirical perspective. We model a setting where such funding may allow U.S. entrepreneurs to pursue technologies that they could not otherwise, but may also lead to spillovers to the overseas firm providing the financing and the nation where it is based. We show that despite the benefits from such inbound investments for U.S. firms, it may be optimal for the U.S. government to raise their costs to deter investments. Using as comprehensive as possible a sample of investments by non-U.S...	Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates, Josh Lerner, et al.
8	2011	Diffusion de la connaissance ↗ This paper is closely related because it models knowledge diffusion explicitly in a Schumpeterian growth framework, which is central to understanding how ideas spread across sectors and affect innovation. It is especially relevant for the project’s interest in the aggregate growth implications of knowledge spillovers, though it does not appear to focus specifically on worker mobility, labor market frictions, or firm-level hiring and retention. Résumé Cet article présente un modèle de croissance schumpetérien, qui généralise la théorie existante : nous utilisons la différenciation circulaire du modèle de Salop [1979] pour prendre en compte le fait que la connaissance se diffuse, avec plus ou moins d’ampleur, entre les secteurs de recherche. Nous expliquons comment se constituent les viviers dans lesquels chaque secteur puise la connaissance pour produire des innovations. La prise en compte explicite de la diffusion de la connaissance nous permet de donner un nouvel éclairage à plusieurs questions : comment expliquer la sur ou sous-optimalité de la croissance ? Brevet ou secret : comment protéger les monopoles ? Quelle est la...	Elie Gray, André Grimaud
8	2012	GAINS AND LOSSES FROM INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN A KNOWLEDGE-DRIVEN SEMI-ENDOGENOUS GROWTH MODEL WITH HETEROGENEOUS FIRMS ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers, heterogeneous firms, and how trade affects R&D-driven growth and welfare, which connects to the project’s interest in technology diffusion and aggregate productivity. However, it focuses on international trade and economy-wide spillovers rather than worker mobility, labor market frictions, or inventor movement as the main transmission mechanism. We consider a semi endogenous R&D growth model with international trade, firm heterogeneity, and local knowledge spillover in a closed economy and international knowledge spillover in a symmetric two country economy. We show that by opening trade R&D difficulty (the number of varieties produced) and welfare are ambiguously affected. When the international spillover is large (small), the former is increased (decreased). When the size of the international knowledge spillover is large (small) or the size of the international knowledge spillover is small and the size of intertemporal knowledge spillover is small (large), the latter increases (decreases). Without intertemporal and international...	Katsufumi Fukuda
8	2022	Vacancy Chains ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies replacement hiring, quits, on-the-job search, and vacancy chains, all of which are central to how worker mobility transmits information and affects firm dynamics. While it does not focus directly on technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its model of labor market frictions and establishment-level turnover is highly relevant for understanding how mobility shapes knowledge reallocation across firms. Replacement hiring-recruitment that seeks to replace positions vacated by workers who quit-plays a central role in establishment dynamics. We document this phenomenon using rich microdata on U.S. establishments, which frequently report no net change in their employment, often for years at a time, despite facing substantial gross turnover in the form of quits. We devise a tractable model in which replacement hiring is driven by a novel structure of frictions, combining firm dynamics, on-the-job search, and investments into job creation that are sunk at the point of replacement.	Michael Elsby, Ryan Michaels, Axel Gottfries, et al.
8	2009	Occupational and Locational Substitution: Measuring the Effect of Occupational and Regional Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies occupational and regional mobility, which are central channels for worker movement and knowledge diffusion. Even without an explicit mention of technology or spillovers, measuring the effects of mobility frictions and substitution across occupations and locations is very likely to inform how labor mobility shapes diffusion and productivity. No abstract available.	Alisher Aldashev
8	2023	Introduction to the Special Issue: Models of linked employer–employee data: Twenty years after “High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms” ↗ [Title only] This special issue introduction is very likely relevant because linked employer–employee data are central to studying worker-firm matching, wage premiums, mobility, and how worker movement transmits knowledge across firms. Even if it is not a direct paper on non-competes or innovation spillovers, the topic sits close to the core mechanisms in your project, especially sorting, mobility, and firm-level heterogeneity in human capital. No abstract available.	David Card, Ian M. Schmutte, Lars Vilhuber
8	2010	Essays on labor mobility and network analysis [Title only] This title directly signals a focus on labor mobility, which is central to the project’s interest in worker movement as a channel for knowledge diffusion and spillovers. The mention of network analysis also suggests an empirical framework that could study how mobility patterns shape connections between workers, firms, and the spread of technology, though the exact emphasis on innovation or non-compete frictions is uncertain. No abstract available.	Carlo Gianelle
8	2010	Labour mobility and informal contacts as mechanisms of knowledge diffusion ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies labour mobility and informal contacts as mechanisms of knowledge diffusion in high-tech R&D settings. It speaks to the project’s core interest in how worker movement and local labor-market connections affect knowledge transfer and creative outcomes, though it is more focused on project-level knowledge sources than on broader frictions like non-competes or aggregate productivity effects. This article is positioned in the debate regarding the relative importance of labour mobility and informal contacts as mechanisms for knowledge diffusion between organisations. Empirically, the article assesses the importance of different knowledge sources utilised by 219 participants in two high-tech, R&D driven, non-incremental, product development projects in large corporations, located in local labour markets highly specialised in their respective industry clusters. The results show that the most important knowledge sources for the respondents are colleagues within the organisation. Informal contacts outside the organisation, although prevalent, are rather unimportant as knowledge...	Erik Lundmark
8	2024	Explore or Exploit? Labor Market Frictions and the Innovation Choice ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a link between labor market frictions and firms' innovation decisions, which is closely related to how mobility constraints shape knowledge diffusion and R&D outcomes. The explore-versus-exploit framing may also connect to hiring, retention, and the allocation of inventive effort, though it is less directly centered on worker mobility than some titles in this area. No abstract available.	Richard T. Thakor
8	2025	Diffusion of Technological Innovation along the Supply Chain ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of how innovations spread across firms through supplier-buyer relationships, which is closely related to knowledge diffusion and technology transfer. It is not directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but supply-chain diffusion is likely a major complementary channel for productivity spillovers and firm-level adoption decisions. No abstract available.	Xuan Tian, Che Zhang
8	2025	Startups, Unicorns, and the Local Influx of Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility and local inflows of technical human capital affect entrepreneurship, firm entry, and the reallocation of venture capital across sectors. It speaks directly to knowledge diffusion through worker movement and the resulting spillovers and competitive effects, though it is more focused on startup formation than on broader labor market frictions like non-competes or matching models. Abstract We provide evidence that an influx of technical human capital improves regional entrepreneurship, both by increasing firm entry and reducing entrepreneurial failure. The results also indicate negative externalities upon lowtech and competing industries: an influx of inventors in a county shifts the locus of venture capital investment away from low-tech startups to high-tech startups and moreover towards new ventures in the same sector as those inventors' skills. We strengthen causal inference with a shift-share instrument which combines the spatial distribution of surnames in the LM>= U.S. Census with thousands of surnamespecific shifts based on modern inventor mobility.	Benjamin Balsmeier, Lee Fleming, Matt Marx, et al.
8	2015	Inventors' Mobility and Organizations' Productivity: Evidence from Japanese rare name inventors This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge transfer and its effect on organizational productivity, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement and spillovers. It also provides evidence that mobile inventors may transmit knowledge to stable inventors, directly connecting to questions about diffusion, firm-level productivity, and the aggregate effects of labor mobility frictions. This paper investigates the relationship between inventors' mobility and organizations' productivity by constructing a database of patent inventors. We focus on inventors with rare names in order to avoid the problem of identifying distinct inventors with the same name. Tracing the inventors' transfers between organizations, we find the following. First, mobile inventors are more productive than stable inventors who have never transferred. Second, inventors with higher ex ante productivity have a higher frequency of transfers, while the effect of transfers on their ex post productivity for productive inventors is the opposite compared with that of less productive inventors. Thus, ex ante...	Yukiko Saito, Isamu Yamauchi
8	2007	Prolific inventors and their mobility: scale, impact and significance. What the literature tells us and some hypotheses This paper is closely related because it focuses on inventor mobility as a mechanism for accumulating knowledge and affecting inventive productivity and invention value. It is mainly a literature survey rather than a direct causal study of labor market frictions or policy effects, but it speaks directly to the project’s themes of inventor movement, knowledge transfer, and innovation outcomes. In this paper we survey the literature dealing with the category of prolific inventor. We set out some elements regarding nature, scale, significance and impact of the mobility of this population of prolific inventors. In particular the paper suggests an analysis that measures the effects on mobility on individual inventive productivity and the value of invention. We call “prolificness ” the capacity to accumulate knowledge and experience through mobility (that is to say through their capital of contacts and interactions). The first goal of this paper is to survey the literature dealing with the category of prolific inventor. It is a piece of a larger research project that aims to assess...	Christian Le Bas
8	2007	Technology Mobility and Job Mobility A comparative analysis between patent and survey data This paper is closely related because it focuses on inventor mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion and compares how different data sources capture technology movement across employers. It is especially useful for understanding measurement issues in studying worker mobility, inventor career paths, and the transfer of knowledge through labor-market transitions. In recent years, increasing attention and resources have been devoted to the analysis of workers’ mobility and the collection of new and extensive datasets in order to monitor and appraise this phenomenon. Most of the studies make use of information about inventors extracted from patent data. In fact, patent data collects detailed information on inventors, their geographical location and the applicants of their patents. This paper instead makes use of unique data on inventors ’ curriculum vitae collected through a survey addressed to a group of Italian inventors in the pharmaceutical field and compares this information to those extracted from patent data. Results seem to challenge the...	Camilla Lenzi
8	2010	Innovation and Specialization Dynamics in the Automotive Sector: Comparative Analysis of Cooperation & Application Networks This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility, knowledge spillovers, and patent-based innovation networks in automotive clusters, which are central to how worker movement diffuses technology across firms and regions. It is especially relevant for understanding how industry structure and regional R&D conditions shape the direction and intensity of knowledge transfer, though it is less directly about labor market frictions or policy interventions like non-competes. This paper considers the innovation dynamics in the automotive industry of selected countries. Key elements concern the intensity of patenting networks. The role of innovation dynamics differs across countries which can be explained in terms of headquarter status, the vertical integration of the sector and the overall structural adjustment. A better regional R&D activity tends to stimulate regional economic development. In this context, clusters become more important, because these constructs are an instrument in promoting innovations, industrial development, industrial competitiveness and growth. This is why we apply social network analysis methods to describe and measure the evolution of...	Oliver Emons
8	2020	Free Agency for the Front Office: How Data Analytics and Non-Compete Agreements Threaten to Disrupt Competitive Balance in U.S. Professional Sports Leagues ↗ This paper is closely related because it centers on non-compete agreements as a barrier to knowledge diffusion, directly matching one of the project’s main labor-market frictions. Its setting is professional sports front offices rather than broader worker mobility in firms, but it still speaks to how restricting employee movement can slow the spread of valuable know-how and affect competitive outcomes. U.S. professional sports teams are increasingly relying on sophisticated forms of data analysis to identify potential areas of competitive advantage over their league rivals. Indeed, emerging evidence suggests that the most sophisticated teams in this area are using the insights that they derive from data analytics to establish durable and significant gains over their competition on the playing field. At the same time, sports franchises frequently utilize non-compete agreements to protect the resulting, proprietary information that their data analysis yields. Unfortunately, recent academic research suggests that this reliance on covenants not to compete can decrease the rate of knowledge...	Nathaniel Grow
8	2024	A Competition Perspective on Physician Non-compete Agreements ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements as a labor-market friction that can restrict worker mobility, which is central to your project’s focus on how such constraints affect knowledge diffusion and competition. Although the setting is physicians rather than engineers or inventors, the policy and antitrust framing around mobility restrictions and market-level effects makes it highly relevant background. Physician non-compete agreements may have significant competitive implications, and effects on both providers and patients, but they are treated variously under the law on a state-by-state basis. Reviewing the relevant law and the economic literature cannot identify with confidence the net effects of such agreements on either physicians or health care delivery with any generality. In addition to identifying future research projects to inform policy, it is argued that the antitrust "rule of reason" provides a useful and established framework with which to evaluate such agreements in specific health care markets and, potentially, to address those agreements most likely to do significant...	Daniel J. Gilman	Other
8	2023	Economist Comments in the Matter of the FTC's Proposed Non-Compete Clause Rule ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns the FTC’s proposed non-compete rule, which is central to worker mobility, labor market frictions, and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Although it is likely a policy comment rather than a research article, it should still contain economist analysis of how non-competes affect innovation, retention, and productivity, making it a strong fit for the project. No abstract available.	Sarah Oh Lam, Thomas M. Lenard, Scott Wallsten
8	2023	Creative Destruction, Distance to Frontier, and Economic Development ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies creative destruction, firm dynamics, and international technology diffusion through spillovers, all of which are central to understanding how knowledge spreads and affects aggregate productivity. While it does not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor market frictions like non-competes, its model of endogenous firm dynamics and policy counterfactuals on technological convergence makes it highly relevant background for the project. We construct a model of creative destruction with endogenous firm dynamics. We integrate the theory into a general equilibrium multi-country model of technological convergence where countries interact via international spillovers. We derive implications for both firm dynamics and aggregate productivity dynamics. In richer economies, firms are on average larger and the best firms grow larger over time. In poorer economies, there is little creative destruction, low selection, and firms remain small. We estimate the parameters of the model using firm-level data for India and the United States. We study the effect of counterfactual policy reforms. Industrial policy that selectively targets the...	Michael Peters, Fabrizio Zilibotti
8	2023	An Anatomy of Monopsony: Search Frictions, Amenities and Bargaining in Concentrated Markets ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies monopsony power, off-the-job and on-the-job search frictions, and how labor market structure affects wages and job flows. While it does not directly focus on knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its mechanisms are highly relevant for understanding how mobility frictions shape worker movement and the allocation of labor across firms. We contribute a theory in which three channels interact to determine the degree of monopsony power and therefore the markdown of a worker ’ s spot wage relative to her marginal product: (1) heterogeneity in worker-ﬁ rm-speci ﬁ c preferences (nonwage amenities), (2) ﬁ rm granularity, and (3) off-and on-the-job search frictions. We use Norwegian data to discipline each channel and then reproduce new reduced-form empirical relationships between market concentration, job ﬂ ows, wages and wage inequality. In doing so we provide a novel method for clustering occupations into local labor markets. Our main exercise quanti ﬁ es the contribution of each channel to income inequality and wage...	David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, Andreas Kostøl, et al.
8	2023	Diaspora Networks, Knowledge Flows and Brain Drain ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on how worker migration and diaspora networks transmit knowledge across locations, which is central to the project’s interest in mobility-driven technology diffusion. It also connects these flows to productivity, human capital investment, and policy frictions around intellectual property, though it is broader and more macro-development oriented than a direct study of labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. I summarize key findings from the literature on how distance, relationships, and ethnic ties influence knowledge flows and describe a model that relates emigration and the diaspora to knowledge flows. I then recap a key study that reports evidence of a link from the diaspora and knowledge flows to home country manufacturing productivity. Next, I summarize the ways in which intellectual property protection may influence knowledge flow patterns through incentives (market for ideas) and disincentives (anticommons). Finally, I speculate on how diaspora knowledge flows and intellectual property may alleviate developing country low-productivity equilibria (poverty traps) caused by an...	Ajay Agrawal
8	2020	Knowledge Spillover Mechanisms ↗ This paper is directly about knowledge spillovers, which are central to the project’s focus on how knowledge moves across firms and workers. The abstract is brief and does not indicate whether it studies worker mobility or labor market frictions specifically, but the core topic is closely aligned with the diffusion mechanism underlying the project. The typical question asked about knowledge spillovers is do they occur? The answer to this question in the empirical literature is mixed.	Stanley D. Nollen	Other
8	2025	Technology spillover through labor mobility in the presence of competition among multinationals ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through worker mobility, explicitly modeling how skilled labor moves between firms and how that movement transmits knowledge. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on labor market frictions and firm competition because it shows how rivalry among multinationals changes retention incentives and can nonlinearly affect the extent of spillovers. Labor turnover from foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) to local firms is widely regarded as a key mechanism for technology spillover in host countries. However, in practice, many trained workers move between MNEs rather than transitioning to local firms. We develop a model in which technology advanced MNEs train local employees and later compete with other firms to retain these skilled workers. Our findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between the degree of technology spillover through labor mobility and competition among MNEs. Specifically, when the number of MNEs is relatively small, the entry of new MNEs enhances technology spillover. However, once the number of MNEs...	Sunjoo Hwang, Seungrae Lee
8	2015	Absorption of Foreign Knowledge: Firms Benefits of Employing Immigrants This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility across borders as a channel for transferring foreign knowledge into firms, which is central to technology diffusion and spillovers. Its focus on immigrant workers, especially highly educated and high-skilled employees from technologically advanced countries, speaks directly to how human capital movement affects firm productivity and knowledge absorption. This paper explores the question of how immigrant employees affect a firm's capacity to absorb foreign knowledge. Using matched employer-employee data from Denmark for the years 1996 to 2009, we are able to show that non-Danish employees from technologically advanced countries contribute significantly to a firm's total factor productivity (TFP) through their ability to access foreign knowledge. The empirical results suggest that the impact increases if the immigrants come from technologically advanced countries, are highly educated, and work in high-skilled positions.	Jürgen Bitzer, Erkan Gören, Sanne Hiller
8	2021	Wage gains from foreign ownership: evidence from linked employer–employee data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility between multinational and domestic firms as a channel for transferable knowledge accumulation and spillovers. Its evidence on wage gains, ex-MNE peers, and ownership changes speaks directly to how labor mobility diffuses knowledge across firms, though it focuses more on wage outcomes than on innovation or productivity dynamics. We compare the wages of skilled workers in multinational enterprises (MNEs) versus domestic firms, the earnings of domestic firm workers with past, future and no MNE experience, and estimate how the presence of ex-MNE peers affects the wages of domestic firm employees. The analysis relies on monthly panel data covering half of the Hungarian population and their employers in 2003-2011. We identify the returns to MNE experience from changes of ownership, wages paid by new firms of different ownership, and the movement of workers between enterprises. We find high contemporaneous and lagged returns to MNE experience and significant spillover effects. Foreign acquisition has a moderate wage...	János Köllő, István Boza, László Balázsi
8	2019	Worker mobility and productivity spillovers: An emerging market perspective ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies technology transfer and productivity spillovers through worker mobility using matched employer-employee data. It is especially relevant for understanding how labor market conditions and skill deficits shape the direction and quality of knowledge diffusion across firms, though it focuses more on spillovers than on mobility frictions like non-competes or search frictions. This paper uses matched employer-employee data from South Africa to examine the extent to which technology transfers between firms through the hiring of workers. Allowing for differential spillovers based on observable technology differences between sending and receiving firms, we find strong evidence for positive productivity spillovers through worker mobility. In contrast to previous studies set in more advanced economies, our results suggest that negative spillovers can occur. Firms that hire workers from less productive firms experience a decline in productivity in the following year compared with similar firms that do not hire any workers. This, we suggest, may be explained by the high...	Ayanda Hlatshwayo, Friedrich Kreuser, Carol Newman, et al.
8	2022	When Do High Performers Join Startups? ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a focus on worker sorting and mobility into startups, which is closely related to how talent moves across firms and how that movement affects knowledge diffusion and innovation. Even without an abstract, the emphasis on high performers and startups makes it likely to speak to hiring frictions, compensation, and the allocation of skilled labor in entrepreneurial firms. No abstract available.	Liinus Hietaniemi
8	2024	Do former employees of foreign MNEs boost incumbent workers’ wages in domestic firms? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker mobility from foreign multinationals to domestic firms transmits knowledge and affects incumbent workers’ wages, which is a direct labor-mobility spillover mechanism in technology diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how mobility shapes the distributional consequences of knowledge transfer, though it focuses on wage spillovers and inequality rather than productivity, innovation, or policy frictions like non-competes. Abstract This paper examines whether there are wage spillovers from workers with experience in foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) to incumbent workers in domestic firms. Using administrative panel data from Ireland, I examine possible heterogeneity for such spillovers across the wage distribution using quantile regressions. I begin by using existing methodology and find that, once industry-year and region-year dummies are added as control variables, the average wage spillover effect on incumbents from former foreign MNE workers moving to domestic firms disappears. Quantile regression results suggest that there are positive spillovers for incumbent workers in the top 50% of the wage...	Eoin T. Flaherty
8	2024	Productivity Growth and Workers’ Job Transitions: Evidence from Census Microdata ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how worker job transitions reallocate labor toward more productive firms and how that affects aggregate productivity growth. Its emphasis on heterogeneous mobility by skill and age is directly relevant to understanding worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion, even though it does not focus explicitly on non-competes, search frictions, or inventor mobility. Abstract We use administrative data for Chile to provide novel insights on the relationship between job transitions and productivity differentials and quantify how different groups contribute to aggregate reallocation. While on average workers move to more productive firms, almost half of transitions are ‘down the productivity ladder’. Reallocation gains are mostly explained by a narrow subset of transitions: young, high-skilled workers generate the lion’s share of aggregate productivity gains. Workers with high turnover contribute proportionally the least. Therefore, while job reallocation yields a net benefit, it hides massive and heterogeneous gross flows, with many appearing to add...	Elías Albagli, Mario Canales, Chad Syverson, et al.
8	2024	The Sharing and Exchange of Patents ↗ This chapter is closely related because it studies mechanisms by which knowledge and technology embodied in patents are transferred across firms, including licensing, pools, sales, and shared ownership. While it focuses more on patent transactions than worker mobility, it is highly relevant for understanding alternative channels of technology diffusion and firm incentives affecting knowledge reallocation. Abstract This chapter covers the different mechanisms used by innovators to share and exchange patents in the market for technology including (cross-)licensing agreements, patent pools, patent pledges and patent commons, outright acquisition of patents, as well as shared ownership of patents. The chapter discusses the different motives that firms have to share patents. It reviews the trade-off involved in licensing between revenue and rent dissipation effects using a simple model. The next sections of the chapter summarize the characteristics and economic effects of sharing patents via patent pools, including those devoted to standard essential patents, patent pledges and patent commons...	Bronwyn H. Hall, Christian Helmers
8	2024	Inventors’ Coworker Networks and Innovation ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it focuses on inventors’ coworker networks, which are a direct channel through which knowledge and technology can diffuse across workers and firms. It likely speaks to how within-firm and inter-worker interactions shape innovation outcomes, though it may be more about collaboration networks than labor-market frictions such as non-competes or mobility costs. No abstract available.	Sabrina Lucia Di Addario, Zhexin Feng, Michel Serafinelli
8	2024	International licensing and quality‐enhancing technology spillover in a product cycle model ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through firm-to-firm transmission, here via international licensing and spillovers that affect innovation incentives across regions. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it is highly relevant to the broader question of how knowledge transfer shapes R&D, productivity, and welfare. Abstract This paper examines the effects of an international quality‐enhancing technology spillover on the international industry distribution and innovation in a dynamic North‐South model. When a Southern firm receives a technology transfer from the North through international licensing, the technology spills over to other Southern firms by enhancing the quality of their products. We find that a stronger spillover effect depresses both Northern innovative R&D and Southern adaptive R&D, and thus is welfare‐impairing both for the advanced country and recipient country. The results cast doubt on the common view that regards the technology spillover as a positive externality.	Po‐yang Yu, Hamid Beladi, Hsun Chu, et al.
8	2021	The relationship between technological learning by hiring and innovation within the context of follower firms in the high-technology industry This paper is closely related because it studies technological learning by hiring among engineers and how worker movement helps follower firms acquire knowledge and innovate. It speaks directly to the project’s core mechanism of labor mobility as a channel for technology diffusion, though it appears more focused on firm-level learning in a specific industry than on broader labor market frictions or aggregate effects. Despite technological learning by hiring becoming more critical for follower firms within the technology-intensive industry, knowledge about the followers’ technological learning by hiring is limited. Drawing upon interviews with managers and hired engineers from follower firms, this thesis provides several empirical studies which provide evidence on how technological learning by hiring affects followers’ innovation.	Mingyeong Jeon
8	2025	<div> <span>Trade Sanctions and Local Inventor Mobility: </span><span>Evidence from the US–China Tech Battle </span></div> ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly focuses on inventor mobility, which is central to technology and knowledge diffusion in the project. The trade sanctions and US–China tech battle context suggests it may also examine how policy and geopolitical frictions affect movement, spillovers, and innovation outcomes, though the exact mechanisms are uncertain from the title alone. No abstract available.	Di Lu, Qi Wu, Jinyu Yang
8	2015	Gaining Competitive Advantage from Human Capital: Role of Markets and Firm Structure This dissertation is closely related because it studies how labor market frictions, firm structure, and openness to factor markets shape managerial mobility and the capture of value from human capital. Its evidence on employment protection, internal redeployment, and disclosure-driven inflows/outflows speaks directly to how mobility affects knowledge retention and diffusion across firms, though it focuses more on competitive advantage than on technology transfer per se. <p>This dissertation develops new theory and evidence to show that human-capital based competitive advantage of firms varies with external markets, firm structure, and firm openness to factor markets. The dissertation includes three empirical studies. </p><p>The first study examines how labor market frictions due to strict employment protection regulations can be a source of competitive advantage for affiliates of corporate groups over standalone firms in environments where benefits from internal market flexibility are high. Utilizing the variation in labor laws and capital market development across 16 West-European countries, the study finds a stronger competitive advantage for group...	Ulya Tsolmon
8	2014	Experience and Knowledge as Complements to Effect Change to the Organizational Code ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies scientist mobility as a mechanism for transferring knowledge and changing organizational capabilities, which is central to worker-driven diffusion of technology across firms. Its main contribution—showing that experience complements distant knowledge in shaping organizational change—speaks directly to how hiring, retention, and worker characteristics affect knowledge diffusion and innovation outcomes. Exploration and exploitation and mobility research both affirm that the hiring of people with new-to-the-organization “distant” knowledge helps reinvigorate exploratory activity and realize change to the organizational code, an organization’s set of domain-specific expertise. An analysis of scientist mobility occurring over a 38-year period in the U.S. biotechnology industry, however, indicates that this is not the case. This anomaly occurs because the experience of new hires is an important omitted variable in prior analysis. Experienced hires are well positioned to socialize other organizational members to the use of their knowledge and thus facilitate change to organizational knowledge...	Amit Jain
8	2014	Following the Light: Opportunities for Technology and Innovation in the Optoelectronics Industry Across Multiple Business Cycles (1955-2010) ↗ This dissertation is closely related because it studies inventor mobility, market switching, and how those worker movements shape innovation and technology trajectories within optoelectronics. It is especially relevant for understanding how labor-market conditions and business-cycle shocks affect the direction and intensity of knowledge diffusion through high-skill workers, though it is less focused on policy frictions like non-competes or formal matching models. Economic downturns have been shown to have disparate effects on the productivity of individuals and firms. However, not much is known about their influence, if any, on technology trajectories. This dissertation explores the relationship between the burst of the telecommunications bubble and the rate and direction of innovation of United States (U.S.) inventors in optoelectronics, a technology pivotal to the telecommunications industry. Leveraging a hand-built dataset of 790 inventor CVs, we analyze optoelectronics’ inventor market shifts and associated innovation outcomes before, during, and after the burst of the telecommunications bubble. We find that the burst of the bubble...	Eyiwunmi Oluyinka Akinsanmi
8	2013	The Impact of Mobility and Entrenchment on Innovative Productivity: Evidence from Genomics Scientist This paper is closely related because it studies how scientist mobility affects innovative productivity through knowledge acquisition, recombination, and network formation, which is central to worker-driven technology diffusion. It also examines how entrenchment and prior collaboration networks condition the gains from mobility, making it highly relevant to understanding frictions and the quality of knowledge transfer across firms and locations. When scientists move to a new location, they may acquire and recombine new knowledge and form new collaborative networks, which can benefit their innovative productivity. However, the extent of this benefit may be conditional upon how entrenched these scientists were in their former locations and networks. In this study, we investigate the impact of scientific mobility and entrenchment on innovative productivity, in terms of the number of patents applied. Drawing upon the population of 5,809 scientists who have contributed to innovation in genomics by being awarded at least one gene patent, we identify focal scientists who have moved as a result of an exogenous shock from the 1994...	Kenneth Guang-Lih Huang, Gökhan Ertug
8	2011	How to Capture Value from Linking to Science-Driven Basic Research: Boundary Crossing Inventors and Partnerships ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it focuses on boundary-crossing inventors and partnerships as a way to capture value from basic research, which directly relates to how inventor mobility and cross-firm or cross-sector linkages transmit knowledge. It is especially likely to speak to knowledge diffusion and innovation outcomes, though it may be more about firm strategy and university-science connections than labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. No abstract available.	Bruno Cassiman, Reinhilde Veugelers, Sam Arts
8	2015	La incorporación de doctores a las empresas y los efectos en el proceso innovador = Firm PhD recruitment and the effects on the innovation process ↗ This paper is closely related because it focuses on firms hiring PhD-level workers and how that affects the innovation process, which is central to understanding knowledge transfer through labor mobility. It is especially relevant for the project’s interest in skilled-worker movement, firm-level hiring decisions, and the productivity and innovation effects of bringing highly educated workers into firms. INTRODUCCIN CAPTULO 1. LA FORMACIN DOCTORAL Y EL SECTOR PRIVADO. 1.1. Los cientficos con el nivel ms alto de formacin acadmica 1.2. La formacin doctoral. 1.3. Los conocimientos y habilidades de los doctores... 1.4. Los tipos de doctores.. 1.5. Qu motiva a los doctores para seguir una carrera en el sector privado.. 1.6. El mercado laboral de los doctores en el sector privado. CAPTULO 2. LA INCORPORACIN DE DOCTORES A LAS EMPRESAS.. 2.1. Estudios a nivel individual.. 2.1.1. Estudios a nivel individual que analizan a estudiantes de doctorado.. 2.1.2. Estudios a nivel individual que analizan las carreras de los doctores graduados. 2.1.2.1	Ernesto Baca Sánchez
8	2016	Learning-By-Being-Acquired: Post-Acquisition R&D Team Reorganization and Knowledge Transfer ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how post-acquisition reorganization of R&D teams affects knowledge transfer across firms through inventor movement and integration. It directly speaks to the mechanisms by which labor-market reallocation, firm integration, and team composition shape the diffusion and use of technological knowledge after mergers and acquisitions. In horizontal acquisitions, the post-acquisition integration of the R&D function often damages the inventive labor force and results in lower innovative productivity of acquired inventors. In this paper we study post-acquisition integration in terms of R&D team reorganization-i.e., the creation of new teams with both inventors of the acquiring and acquired firms-and assess the impact of this integration action in the period that immediately follows the acquisition. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theories, we argue that R&D team reorganization increases the acquired inventors’ use of the prior stock of technological knowledge of the acquiring firm after the acquisition...	Massimo G. Colombo, Solon Moreira, Larissa Rabbiosi
8	2019	Knowledge spillovers and patent citations: trends in geographic localization, 1976-2015 ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies knowledge spillovers through patent citations and how their geographic localization has changed over time, which is central to understanding how technology diffuses across firms and regions. While it does not directly analyze worker mobility or labor market frictions, its evidence on where spillovers occur provides important context for the project’s focus on mechanisms that shape the diffusion of knowledge. This paper examines the trends in geographic localization of knowledge spillovers via patent citations, extracting multiple cohorts of new sample US patents from the period of 1976-2015. Despite accelerating globalization and widespread per-ception of the “death of distance,” our matched-sample study reveals signiﬁcant and growing localization eﬀects of knowledge spillovers at both intra- and international levels after the 1980s. Increased localization eﬀects have been accompanied by greater heterogeneity across states and industries. The results are robust to various methods of proxying the existing geography of knowledge production.	Hyuk-Soo Kwon, Sokbae Lee, Jihong Lee, et al.
8	2015	Acquired Inventors’ Productivity after Horizontal Acquisition: Managing the R&D Integration Process [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it focuses on acquired inventors, their productivity, and how horizontal acquisition affects R&D integration, all of which directly relate to the movement of skilled workers and the transmission of knowledge across firms. The emphasis on managing the R&D integration process suggests it likely sheds light on how firm acquisition and worker retention practices influence innovation outcomes and knowledge diffusion, though it may be more firm-integration than labor-friction focused. No abstract available.	Massimo G. Colombo, Solon Moreira, Larissa Rabbiosi
8	2017	Context Factors and the Performance of Mobile Individuals in Research Teams ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns mobile individuals in research teams, which likely connects to how worker or researcher mobility affects knowledge transfer and team performance. The emphasis on context factors suggests it may study conditions that shape the productivity consequences of mobility, though it may be more focused on team performance than on broader labor-market frictions or diffusion mechanisms. No abstract available.	Chiara Franzoni, Giuseppe Scellato, Paula E. Stephan
8	2018	Where Should They Hire From? Platform Skills and the Value of New Hires in the Software Industry ↗ [Title only] This title appears highly relevant because it focuses on hiring decisions in the software industry, where worker movement and skill composition are central to how firms acquire knowledge and capabilities. The emphasis on platform skills and the value of new hires suggests potential links to labor market matching, human capital transfer, and technology diffusion across firms, though it may be more about firm hiring strategy than direct mobility frictions. No abstract available.	Chunmian Ge, Ke‐Wei Huang, Atreyi Kankanhalli
8	2019	Outbound Opening Up The Innovation Process: Implications on Outbound Labor Mobility ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a firm’s openness in R&D affects outbound labor mobility of inventors, directly linking knowledge diffusion and worker movement. Its focus on IBM’s patent pledge as a shock to outbound openness speaks to how firm policies can alter poaching incentives and retention, which are central mechanisms in the project. Labor mobility is one of the main reasons why firms are deviating from the proprietary innovation model towards opening the borders of the firm for knowledge exchange with the outside (Dahlander & Gann, 2010). Not only have firms started to acknowledge the importance of inbound open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003), but the outbound open innovation is becoming more common (Tranekjer & Knudsen, 2012). Therefore, the question this research discussing is about the changes in the firm’s labor mobility after the adoption of openness in its R&D strategy. Firm’s strategic shift towards outbound openness allows for knowledge transfer to other firms, which could reduce the other firms’ motivation to...	Said Matr
8	2019	How Do Mobility Direction and Human Assets of Mobile Engineers Affect Joint Knowledge Creation after M&As? ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies mobile engineers as vehicles for knowledge transfer and joint knowledge creation, which is central to worker mobility-driven diffusion of technology across firms. Its focus on pre-M&A mobility direction and human assets also speaks to how firm relationships and labor movement shape the quality and intensity of knowledge spillovers, though it is narrower than the broader policy and equilibrium questions in the project. We focused on mobile engineers, a distinctive employee group that may have unique reactions to mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Mobile engineers, employees that move from one firm to another, were previously recognized as an undesirable loss by most knowledge-intensive organizations. However, in this study, we show that they may return to their former organizations as effective knowledge creators when their previous and new organizations unite through M&As. We specifically investigated how their mobility direction, relational assets, and intellectual assets affect the amount of knowledge that is jointly created through inter-personal collaborations following the M&A. Using the data of 410...	Namgyoo K. Park, Monica Young-Shin Chun, Jeonghwan Lee
8	2019	In Search of Inspiration: External Hiring, Internal Mobility, and Creative Production ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies external hiring versus internal mobility as a mechanism for creative production and innovation within firms, which fits the project’s focus on how worker movement affects knowledge diffusion and firm performance. While it does not directly examine non-competes, inventor mobility, or economy-wide spillovers, it provides useful evidence on how labor market allocation shapes intrapreneurship and turnover in technology companies. The practice of external hiring continues unabated, despite growing evidence that its costs often exceed its returns. In view of this, we consider whether external hiring provides value to firms that prior research has not captured: Namely, greater opportunity for intrapreneurship. Social capital theory is consistent with the idea that external hires can catalyze innovation in firms, insofar as knowledge is more heterogeneous between than within groups. We test this intuition via a study of intrapreneurship among product managers in large technology companies. We use machine learning to operationalize intrapreneurship as the semantic similarity between product managers’ description of their...	Weiyi Ng, Eliot Sherman
8	2017	The Impact of Open Innovation on Employee Mobility and Entrepreneurship ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how R&D collaboration affects skilled employee mobility and entrepreneurship, which are key channels for knowledge diffusion across firms. It also speaks to how firms' innovation strategies can alter workers’ outside options and departure rates, directly connecting to labor mobility frictions and the movement of human capital in the diffusion process. Prior research shows that firms can increase their innovation performance by leveraging external sources of knowledge. However, insights related to potential drawbacks of open collaborative approaches for innovation remain scarce. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between R&D collaboration and the departure of skilled employees. Highly qualified scientists and engineers who interact with external partners in the context of R&D collaborations may increase their outside options, resulting in higher rates of employee mobility to other firms and employee entrepreneurship. We analyze our research question using data from the Swedish edition of the Community Innovation (CIS) survey...	Markus Simeth
8	2017	The Role of R&D Offshoring in Knowledge Diffusion: New Evidence from China ↗ [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it focuses on R&D offshoring as a channel for knowledge diffusion, which is closely related to how technology and know-how move across firms and borders. The China setting likely adds evidence on international spillovers and firm-level innovation dynamics, though it may be more about offshoring and geography than worker mobility specifically. No abstract available.	Guangwei Li
8	2022	Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak on Engineers’ Mobility: Evidence From Patent Data in the Semiconductor Industry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies engineer mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion across borders in a high-tech industry, which is central to the project. Its focus on how COVID-19 altered mobility patterns for top engineers also speaks to how labor market shocks and frictions affect the flow of tacit knowledge and technology spillovers. This study examines how the mobility of engineers in the semiconductor industry changed after COVID-19. Through the analysis of patent data, differences in the impact on the probability of engineers moving across borders before and after the outbreak were compared. The analysis reveals that before the outbreak, the probability of engineers moving internationally was higher for top-ranked engineers, who accounted for 1% of all engineers, than that for second-, third-, and lowest-ranked engineers. However, after the outbreak, behavioral changes were observed only in top-ranked engineers, so they had a lower probability of mobility than any other rank of engineers.	Ayano Fujiwara
8	2014	Learning on the Job? Employee Mobility in the Asset Management Industry ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies employee mobility in an industry where knowledge transfer, human capital accumulation, and learning from employers are likely central mechanisms. Even though it is in asset management rather than manufacturing or tech, mobility-driven diffusion of skills and information across firms fits squarely with the project’s focus on worker movement and knowledge spillovers. No abstract available.	Aaron Chatterji, Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Evan Rawley
8	2023	CSR Ratings in the Presence of a Former Rating Agency Analyst: Evidence from LinkedIn ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies interfirm labor mobility as a mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge, showing that hiring a former rating agency analyst improves a firm’s CSR ratings. While the context is CSR ratings rather than technology or innovation, the core mechanism of worker movement generating knowledge spillovers across organizations is directly relevant to the project. This chapter examines whether the level of CSR ratings is relatively higher for firms hiring a former CSR analyst from KLD (Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini Research & Analytics). Using hand-collected data from LinkedIn profiles, I show that the presence of former KLD rating agency analysts is positively related to KLD’s CSR ratings for their current employers while it is not associated with CSR ratings from a different data provider (Thomson Reuters’s ASSET4). These findings indicate that tacit knowledge about the internal generation of CSR ratings varies across different raters. The positive relationship between the existence of a former KLD analyst and KLD’s CSR ratings extends to a...	Dongyoung Lee
8	2023	Human Capital Mobility and Analyst Forecast Accuracy: Evidence from Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine Adoption ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it studies human capital mobility and a legal restriction tied to movement across employers, which fits directly with worker mobility frictions and policy effects on knowledge flow. Analyst forecast accuracy is not the core innovation/diffusion outcome, but the focus on Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine adoption suggests an institutional shock to mobility that can plausibly affect information transfer and labor-market-driven knowledge spillovers. No abstract available.	Yunhao Dai, Weiqiang Tan, Daifei Yao
8	2023	Environmental innovation and international migration of inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for cross-country diffusion of knowledge and its effects on innovation outcomes. Although the focus is on environmental innovation rather than labor market frictions or firm-level hiring policies, it directly speaks to how migrant inventors transfer technology and shape the direction and quality of innovation. Abstract We study the effects of migrant inventors on environmental innovation activity for sustainable development. We focus on the migration of inventors from (to) countries that specialize in patent applications grouped into eight environment-related technology domains. Using the novel dataset created by Pellegrino et al. (2023) and a weighting scheme to construct the migrant inventor variables, we create accurate measures of the stock of immigrant and emigrant inventors. We find a positive and significant impact of migrant inventors on the green innovation activity of both receiving and sending countries. The results indicate that environmental innovation rises with R&D expenditure...	Ivan Etzo, Sumiko Takaoka
8	2024	Executive Incentives and Strategic Talent Acquisition: Evidence from Poaching ↗ [Title only] This paper looks highly relevant because “strategic talent acquisition” and “poaching” directly concern worker mobility, hiring from rivals, and the transfer of skills or knowledge across firms. The executive-incentive angle suggests it may also speak to firm-level decisions that shape talent flows and competitive spillovers, though it may focus more on managerial labor markets than broad technology diffusion. No abstract available.	Matthew J. Bloomfield, Thomas Bourveau, Xuanpu Lin, et al.
8	2024	Environmental Innovation and International Migration of Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion and innovation across countries, which is central to the project’s focus on worker movement and spillovers. It is especially relevant for understanding how migrant inventors affect the direction and intensity of innovation, though it emphasizes environmental technology and international migration rather than labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. We study the effects of migrant inventors on environmental innovation activity for sustainable development. We focus on inventor migration from (to) countries specializing in patent applications grouped into eight environment-related technology domains. Using the novel dataset created by Pellegrino et al. (2023) and a weighting scheme to construct the migrant inventor variables, we create accurate measures of the stock of immigrant and emigrant inventors. We find a positive and significant impact of migrant inventors on the green innovation activity of both receiving and sending countries. The results indicate that environmental innovation rises with R&D expenditure, international trade...	Ivan Etzo, Sumiko Takaoka
8	2024	The Role of Social Ties in Spreading Innovation: Evidence from Alien Merchant Guilds in China ↗ [Title only] This paper looks highly relevant because it appears to study how social networks and merchant guild relationships help spread innovation, which is directly related to knowledge diffusion and the channels through which ideas move across agents and firms. Although the title emphasizes social ties rather than labor mobility specifically, merchant guilds and foreign merchants may still provide evidence on frictions, spillovers, and institutional mechanisms that govern the transmission of new technologies. No abstract available.	Xiaoquan Wang, Qi Wu, Hong Zhang	Other
8	2025	How Does Publicly Available Knowledge Affect Interfirm Hiring? ↗ [Title only] The title is highly relevant because it directly links publicly available knowledge to interfirm hiring, which is a central channel for worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It likely speaks to how knowledge spillovers shape hiring patterns across firms, though the focus on publicly available rather than embodied worker knowledge makes the fit slightly less exact. No abstract available.	Shu Deng, Haemin Dennis Park, Daehyun Kim
8	2025	The Role of Recruit Centrality in Driving Technological Knowledge Evolution in Firms ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly links recruiting and firm technological knowledge evolution, which strongly suggests worker mobility as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. The phrase "recruit centrality" may indicate network-based hiring patterns or talent flows across firms, making it plausibly connected to spillovers, hiring strategies, and the direction of technology transfer. No abstract available.	Amit Jain
8	2025	Knowledge Brokering as Adaptive Innovation: Evidence from Post-Acquisition Inventors ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it explicitly studies inventors after acquisitions, a setting where worker movement, reallocation, and changed organizational boundaries can affect knowledge diffusion. The phrase "knowledge brokering" suggests it examines how inventors transfer ideas across teams or firms, which is directly connected to technology diffusion and innovation dynamics, though the title alone does not indicate whether it focuses on labor market frictions like non-competes or search frictions. No abstract available.	Kwangjun An, Yong‐Hwan Lee
8	2025	When do firms learn by hiring? How complexity moderates the value of new knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies learning by hiring as a mechanism for knowledge transfer across firms, which is central to worker mobility and technology diffusion. Its focus on how firm-level knowledge characteristics and complexity shape the absorption of external knowledge is relevant to understanding frictions and heterogeneity in the effectiveness of labor-mediated spillovers, though it does not directly study policy or economy-wide mobility constraints. Abstract Research Summary Organizations often hire employees hoping to acquire new knowledge. While the literature has paid considerable attention to the role of the characteristics of the source of knowledge, the recipient firm, and the knowledge being transferred, it has largely overlooked those of the knowledge being replaced. Using a computational model, we examine how the pre‐existing knowledge of the hiring firm—specifically its degrees of internal and external fit—influences its ability to learn. Our findings suggest that firms with lower internal fit absorb new knowledge more quickly, even when controlling for initial external fit. We identify several mechanisms driving this...	Dong Nghi Pham, Luis A. Rios, Maciej Workiewicz
8	2022	Precocious inventors: early patenting success and lifetime inventive performance ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventors’ career productivity, the role of employers in retaining high-performing inventors, and how early inventive success signals underlying ability that affects later innovation. It is less directly about diffusion or labor market frictions like non-competes, but it speaks to inventor mobility, retention, and the allocation of inventive talent across firms. Precocious inventors have a higher inventive productivity during their remaining career. Inventors who have their first patent either applied for extraordinarily fast or a first patent of especially high quality are regarded as precocious. This paper systematically includes individual and employer characteristics that can drive career productivity beside an early patenting success to reveal the true productivity effect of precociousness. We show that early patenting success reveals dimensions of inventive ability that are not captured in individual characteristics that are predetermined at the start of the career such as the school education level. The favourable work environment precocious...	Theresa Michlbauer, Thomas Zwick
8	2022	Filling the Gap: The Consequences of Collaborator Loss in Corporate R&D ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility shocks within corporate R&D and how the loss of a collaborator changes productivity, retention, and bargaining power inside firms. Although it focuses on unexpected death rather than voluntary worker movement or policy frictions like non-competes, it speaks directly to how labor-market disruptions affect knowledge production and firm responses in innovation teams. IZA DP No. 15618 OCTOBER 2022 Filling the Gap: The Consequences of Collaborator Loss in Corporate R&D* We examine how collaborator loss affects knowledge workers in corporate R&D. We argue that such a loss affects the remaining collaborators not only by reducing their teamspecific capital (as argued in the prior literature) but also by increasing their bargaining power over the employer, who is in need of filling the gap left by the lost collaborator to ensure the continuation of R&D projects. This shift in bargaining power may, in turn, lead to benefits, such as additional resources or more attractive working conditions. These benefits can partially compensate for the negative effect of...	Felix Pöge, Fabian Gaessler, Karin Hoisl, et al.
8	2023	Innovation and the Enforceability of Noncompete Agreements ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how noncompete enforceability affects innovation, a central friction in the project’s question about worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Even without an abstract, the title suggests it likely examines how restricting employee movement changes inventive activity and the flow of ideas across firms. ,	Matthew S. Johnson, Michael Lipsitz, Alison Pei
8	2024	Need for Speed: Quality of Innovations and the Allocation of Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor allocation, innovation quality, and spillovers across firms, all of which are central to understanding how knowledge diffuses through labor movement and innovation outcomes. It does not focus directly on worker mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs, but its endogenous growth framework and emphasis on firm/inventor decisions make it highly relevant background for the project. This paper studies how the speed-quality tradeoff in innovation interacts with firm dynamics, concentration, and economic growth. Empirically, we document long-run trends in the increasing speed of innovation alongside declining quality at large firms. Leveraging variation from an exogenous policy change, we document the existence of the speed-quality tradeoff both at the firm and aggregate level. We develop an endogenous growth model that incorporates the speed-quality tradeoff and show that allocating less labor towards speed increases growth, particularly in the presence of private benefits to innovation and spillovers from heterogeneous innovations. We quantify the model to link firms’...	Santiago Caicedo, Jeremy Pearce
8	2024	Innovation and Regional Development: The Impact of Patenting on Labor Market Outcomes ↗ [Title only] This title is strongly related because it links innovation activity and patenting to labor market outcomes, which is likely to involve how inventive activity affects worker mobility, wages, and local employment dynamics. It may be more about regional development and labor-market consequences than direct knowledge diffusion mechanisms, but patents are often central to studies of technology spillovers and inventor movement. No abstract available.	Ali Sina Önder, Sascha Schweitzer, Olga Tcaci
8	2025	When Stars Hold Power: The Impact of Returnee Deans on Academic Publications in Chinese Universities ↗ [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it studies returnee deans in Chinese universities, and return migration of highly skilled individuals is a direct channel for knowledge transfer, institutional change, and productivity effects. The focus on academic publications also suggests it may speak to how elite worker mobility and leadership affect innovation output, although it is more about academia than firm-level diffusion and thus slightly narrower than the core project. No abstract available.	Dong Xiaofang, Li Qiao
8	2025	Conflict and Knowledge Flows: Evidence From the 9/11 Attacks ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a shock changes cross-border knowledge flows through patent citations, collaborations, and inventor-related patent activity. While it is centered on geopolitical conflict and trust rather than worker mobility frictions like non-competes or search costs, its mechanism and outcome—disruption in knowledge diffusion—are highly relevant to the project. ABSTRACT We assess how geopolitical conflict affects cross‐border knowledge flows by exploring an unexpected event: the 9/11 attacks. Exploiting cross‐country patent citation, collaboration data from the PATSTAT (1990–2015), patent transaction and grant outcome data from Bureau van Dijk's Orbis (Q1 2001–Q4 2003), we show that the trust ‐erosion shock between ethnic groups significantly reduced knowledge flows between NATO and Muslim‐majority countries, with sharper declines in high‐ trust sectors and patents involving Muslim inventors. Our analysis reveals that trust erosion, rather than conventional economic channels like trade, FDI, or migration serves as the primary mechanism, evidenced...	Cathy Ge Bao, Jie Cui, Ying Tie
8	2026	International collaborations and the patenting intensity of US inventors ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly studies inventors, patenting, and cross-border collaboration, all of which are central to knowledge diffusion and the movement of ideas through labor networks. Even if it does not focus explicitly on worker mobility frictions or policy, international collaborations among US inventors likely speak to how human capital and research relationships transmit technology across firms and countries. No abstract available.	Guido Pialli
8	2025	On-the-job search and the productivity-wage gap ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search as a labor market friction that shapes worker outside options, firm bargaining power, and the allocation of productivity gains between firms and workers. While it does not directly analyze knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its mechanism is relevant for understanding how mobility frictions and search behavior affect firm dynamics and the transmission of productivity through the labor market. We examine how worker and firm on-the-job search have differential impacts on the productivity-wage gap. While an increase in both worker and firm on-the-job search raise productivity, they have opposing effects on wages. Increased worker on-the-job search raises workers' outside options, allowing them to demand higher wages. Increased firm on-the-job search improves firms' bargaining position relative to workers' by raising job insecurity and the wedge between hiring and meeting rates. This allows firms to pass-through a smaller share of productivity to wages, enlarging the productivity-wage gap. Quantitatively, the model can account for the observed widening US productivity-wage gap over...	Sushant Acharya, Shu Lin Wee
8	2020	Idea Diffusion and Property Rights ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion, industry evolution, and the incentives to innovate under property rights, which are central to understanding how knowledge spreads across firms. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor-market frictions, but its focus on idea transfer meetings and partial protection of innovators speaks to the mechanisms that shape diffusion and growth. We study innovation and diffusion of technology at the industry level. We derive an industry's evolution, from birth to its maturity, and we characterize how diffusion affects the incentive to innovate. The model implies that protection of innovators should be only partial due to the congestion externality in the meetings in which idea transfers take place. We fit the model to the early experiences of the automobile and the personal computer industries, both of which show -shaped growth of the number of firms.	Boyan Jovanovic, Wang Zhu, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
8	2023	L'uso dei patti di non concorrenza in Italia: uno studio empirico ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete clauses as a direct labor market friction that restricts worker mobility, a central mechanism in the project. Its empirical focus on Italy, including prevalence, incidence, and regulatory implications, is useful for understanding how mobility constraints shape knowledge diffusion and monopsony power, though it does not directly measure technology spillovers or innovation outcomes. Ricerche empiriche recenti evidenziano la pervasività del potere datoriale nel mercato del lavo-ro (monopsonio del lavoro). Diversi fattori alimentano tale potere di mercato, tra cui le restri-zioni alla mobilità dei lavoratori che rendono più difficile cambiare occupazione. Tra queste restrizioni vi sono i patti (o clausole) di non concorrenza che limitano la capacità dei lavoratori di (re)impiegare la propria professionalità una volta terminato il rapporto di lavoro. Il contribu-to presenta le principali evidenze di uno studio empirico su quadro regolativo, utilizzo, inci-denza e contenuto dei patti di non concorrenza nel mercato del lavoro italiano. Tali clausole risultano essere...	Tito Boeri, Andrea Garnero, Lorenzo Giovanni Luisetto
8	2025	Noncompete Agreements and Firm Competition: Lessons from Collegiate Athletics ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how a noncompete-like restriction affects the allocation of talent across competing organizations, which maps directly to the project’s interest in labor market frictions and worker mobility. Its evidence on talent reallocation, recruiting responses, and dynamic entrenchment provides useful context for how easing mobility can change knowledge or skill diffusion within an industry, even though the setting is collegiate athletics rather than firms and inventors. In 2021, the National Collegiate Athletic Association eliminated a highly restrictive rule requiring athletes to sit out a year if they transferred schools. Using matched player-team data across eight sports, we investigate this policy change to understand how industry-wide noncompete agreements shape the allocation of talent across firms and the competitive dynamics among incumbents when there are barriers to entry, which shuts down the spinoff channel through which noncompete removal is argued to increase competition. We find that removing the noncompete minimally alters cross-sectional competitive balance, yet there is dynamic entrenchment of the top and bottom teams consistent with...	Scott Abrahams, Luke Fesko
8	2025	Unraveling and Inefficient Matching ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market poaching, secondary markets, and information frictions that shape how workers are matched across firms. Its focus on how transparency affects inefficient matching and poaching connects directly to worker mobility as a mechanism for reallocating talent and influencing knowledge diffusion, though it is less directly about technology transfer or innovation outcomes. Labor markets unravel when workers and firms match inefficiently early under limited information. I argue that a significant determinant of unraveling is the presence of a secondary market, where firms can poach workers, and its transparency: how well firms can ascertain workers' value once they are employed by competitors. While early hiring reduces the probability of hiring a high-type worker, it prevents rivals from learning about the worker, making poaching difficult. When secondary markets are very transparent, unraveling disappears. However, the matching remains inefficient due to the incentives of low-tier firms to communicate that they have not hired top-quality workers. (JEL C78...	Akhil Vohra
8	2026	The Labor Market Return to Permanent Residency ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how mobility restrictions affect worker job switching, reallocation across firms, and earnings, which are central mechanisms in the diffusion of knowledge through labor mobility. Although it focuses on temporary foreign workers and visa policy rather than inventors or explicit technology spillovers, its search-and-matching framework and counterfactuals on mobility frictions are highly relevant for understanding how labor market constraints shape diffusion and aggregate outcomes. A central question in immigration policy is how mobility restrictions affect the wages of temporary foreign workers (TFWs). We study the labor market return to TFWs gaining permanent residency (PR), which loosens mobility restrictions. Using administrative data linking matched employer-employee data in Canada to temporary and permanent visa records from 2004–2014 along with an event-study design, we find that gaining PR leads to a sharp, immediate, and persistent increase in the job switching rate of 21.7 percentage points and an increase in earnings of 3.2 percent three years after PR. These gains are driven primarily by reallocation across firms: workers move to higher-paying firms, and...	Kory Kroft, Isaac Norwich, Matthew Notowidigdo, et al.
8	2026	Cartel Discipline with Worker Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a link between worker mobility and the enforcement or stability of cartels, which is likely to involve how employee movement transmits information, weakens secrecy, or alters firm-to-firm knowledge flows. While it is more about collusion than innovation per se, worker mobility is central enough here to be highly relevant to the project’s themes of labor frictions, knowledge diffusion, and firm dynamics. No abstract available.	Ori Zax
8	2026	Noncompete Agreements and Bargaining Power ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies noncompete agreements as a labor market friction shaping worker mobility, wage growth, and firm-provided investment in skills. It speaks directly to the project’s themes of how mobility restrictions alter knowledge diffusion and the incentives for firms to invest in transferable or industry-specific human capital, though it is more focused on bargaining and wages than on aggregate innovation or inventor mobility. Noncompete agreements (NCs) present a trade-off between firm investment incentives and allocative efficiency. We illustrate this trade-off using a contract choice model in which NCs encourage industry-specific investments and wages are determined by bargaining. When worker bargaining power is sufficiently high, the NC and no-NC contracts are identical, as neither contract yields firm-provided investments. When firms have all the bargaining power, NCs encourage industry-specific investments but lower wage growth. Empirically, the wage gains from NCs are driven by nonnegotiators, aligning with our model's interpretation that NCs encourage firms to provide transferable skills when they have...	Bhargav Gopal, Xiangru Li, Luke Rawling
8	2026	The Effect of Noncompete Enforceability on Productivity: Evidence from a New State-Level Manufacturing Dataset ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies how noncompete enforceability affects productivity, a central mechanism in your project on labor market frictions and worker mobility. Its focus on state-level manufacturing productivity also speaks to the aggregate effects of restricting worker movement, though it appears less directly about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility specifically. Roughly 20 percent of US workers have noncompete agreements (NCAs), restricting their ability to join or form competing firms after separating from their employer. While there is now evidence that stricter NCA enforceability reduces wages, effects on productivity are a priori unclear. Enforcing NCAs might lower productivity by discouraging worker effort, creating mismatch in labor markets, or reducing innovation and entrepreneurship. Alternatively, enforcing NCAs might increase productivity by encouraging firm investment. We estimate the net effect of legal NCA enforceability on productivity by introducing a novel dataset on state-level manufacturing.	Katherine Chang, Matthew Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, et al.
8	2025	Did the Working for Workers Act work? The need to better understand the prevalence, use and impact of non-competes in Canada ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it directly concerns non-compete agreements, a central labor-market friction in the project's study of worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. The policy-focused framing on prevalence, use, and impact in Canada suggests it may provide evidence on how restricting mobility affects workers and potentially innovation, though the title does not explicitly mention technology spillovers or productivity. No abstract available.	M. Chiasson
8	2022	The Enforceability of Non-Compete Agreements and Different Types of Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Utah and Massachusetts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how non-compete agreement enforceability shapes worker exit into entrepreneurship, a key labor-market friction affecting mobility and knowledge reallocation. Although it focuses on entrepreneurship rather than direct inventor or skilled-worker spillovers, its evidence on policy-induced changes in worker movement is highly relevant to diffusion, firm dynamics, and innovation incentives. PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to expand the empirical literature on the association between non-compete agreement (NCA) enforceability and entrepreneurship by investigating how NCA policies affect different types of entrepreneurship with incorporated and unincorporated businesses.Design/methodology/approachThe authors estimate difference-in-differences regressions based on individual-level data. This allows to control for heterogeneity at the individual level. Additionally, the authors provide graphical evidence using the synthetic control method (SCM).FindingsThe authors' findings show that the decrease in the enforceability of NCAs in Massachusetts resulted in a higher rate of...	Ege Can, Frank M. Fossen
8	2024	How Does Labor Market Mobility Affect Managerial Learning from Competitors’ Stock Valuations? ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it directly studies labor market mobility as a channel through which managers learn from competitors, which fits the project’s focus on worker movement and knowledge diffusion. The emphasis on competitors’ stock valuations suggests a mechanism for cross-firm information transfer and managerial learning, though it may be more about managerial decision-making than broader inventor or engineer mobility. No abstract available.	Jeffrey Ng, Shuran Zhang
8	2024	Worker Turnover, Disruptive Innovation, and Productivity Growth * ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a link between worker turnover and innovation-driven productivity growth, which is central to how labor mobility transmits knowledge across firms. Even without explicit mention of non-competes or inventor mobility, it is likely highly relevant because turnover can be a key channel for diffusion of disruptive ideas and technologies. No abstract available.	Hyejin Park
8	2024	Does Knowledge Protection Spur Common Ownership? Evidence from the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because the inevitable disclosure doctrine is a legal restriction on worker mobility and knowledge transfer, directly tying into how labor-market frictions affect diffusion of technology and know-how. The common ownership angle suggests a broader firm-governance response to knowledge protection, which may have implications for incentives, innovation, and the allocation of knowledge across firms. No abstract available.	Jiaying Li, Jiajun Tao
8	2025	Workforce Mobility and Corporate Misconduct: The Governance Effects of Noncompete Agreements ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it directly studies workforce mobility and noncompete agreements, which are central labor-market frictions in your project. The corporate misconduct/governance angle is somewhat adjacent rather than directly about knowledge diffusion or innovation, but it may still speak to how restricting worker movement affects firm behavior and broader economic outcomes. No abstract available.	Kentaro Asai, Nhan Le, Qianru Zhang
8	2025	Labor Networks, Mobility and Firm Policies ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a link between worker movement and the network structure through which information or skills may flow across firms, which is central to labor-based knowledge diffusion. The mention of firm policies also aligns well with questions about retention, compensation, and mobility frictions affecting how technology and knowledge spread, though the exact focus is uncertain without an abstract. No abstract available.	Huihui Cheng, Simi Kedia
8	2025	Skilled Foreign Labor Supply and Corporate Investment: Evidence from H-1B Lotteries and Application Deadlines ↗ [Title only] This paper is likely highly relevant because it studies skilled foreign labor supply through H-1B lotteries and deadlines, which directly affect firms’ access to specialized workers and potential channels for technology and knowledge transfer. Even if the main focus is corporate investment rather than mobility frictions per se, the setting is closely tied to how labor-market access to talent shapes firm behavior, innovation capacity, and diffusion of expertise. No abstract available.	Sheng-Jun Xu
8	2025	Replacing labour with capital: Evidence from aggregate mobility shocks ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how restrictions on worker mobility affect firm behavior, using a legal shock that limits labor movement and changes wages, turnover, and input choices. While it focuses more on capital-labor substitution than direct knowledge diffusion, the mechanism of mobility frictions shaping firm decisions is central to the project. Do firms respond to labour mobility shocks? We construct an overlapping generations model where policies restricting labour mobility present firms with an important trade-off. Firms leverage their monopsony power to reduce late-career wages while early-career workers demand a wage premium to join the restricted sector. In response to higher labour turnover costs, firms alter their optimal capital–labour ratio. We confirm these predictions in the data by exploiting the statewide adoption by state supreme courts of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) as a valid legal doctrine intended to protect trade secrets by restricting labour mobility. Post-IDD, early-career workers receive higher...	Bharadwaj Kannan, Roberto Pinheiro, Harry J. Turtle
8	2025	Regional Labor Mobility and Corporate Violations: An analysis driven by NLP and PCA ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies regional labor mobility and non-compete enforcement, which are central frictions in the diffusion of knowledge across firms. Its focus is on corporate violations rather than technology spillovers or innovation outcomes, but the labor mobility index and enforcement analysis are directly relevant to worker movement and market frictions. This paper examines the impact of regional labor mobility on corporate violations. Using natural language processing (NLP) to extract legal text information and construct keywords and using the TF-IDF algorithm to quantify the legal enforcement of non-compete clauses. PCA was then used to generate a comprehensive labor mobility index. Furthermore, the BERT model was used to accurately classify violation texts, and TF-IDF and cosine similarity algorithms were used to identify duplicate violation records to ensure data accuracy. The results show that higher regional labor mobility is associated with fewer corporate violations. This provides theoretical basis and practical guidance for...	Juanchi Li, Xinyue Li, Jiayi Zhong, et al.
8	2026	Unlocking Mobility:Does NCA Enforceability Uncertainty Create Shareholder Value? ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies non-compete enforceability and skilled-labor mobility frictions, which are central to understanding how restrictions on worker movement affect knowledge diffusion and firm outcomes. Its focus on shareholder value and heterogeneous firm responses also speaks to the project’s interest in how labor market policies shape firm-level incentives and the broader implications of mobility constraints. Do changes in regulatory uncertainty affect shareholder value? The FTC’s 2024 nationwide ban on non-compete agreements (NCAs) increased uncertainty about NCA enforceability and raised the expected costs and risks of restricting labor mobility. Exploiting cross-state heterogeneity in pre-existing NCA regimes, we find higher announcement-window returns for firms headquartered in states where NCAs were enforceable (especially where enforceability applied to higher-income workers) relative to states with longstanding bans. The effect is stronger for financially constrained, volatile, and knowledge-intensive firms, and for those more exposed to skilled-labor frictions, while dominant industry...	Teng Wang, Buhui Qiu, Ya Liu
8	2026	Key-Employee Stability and IPO Underpricing: Evidence from Non-compete Agreements Enforceability ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete enforceability as a labor market friction that affects the stability of key employees and the retention of firm-specific human capital. While its outcome is IPO underpricing rather than technology diffusion or worker mobility per se, it speaks directly to how restrictions on employee movement shape firm innovation-related value and the pricing of human capital. I examine whether the stability of key employees at the issuing firm affects the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). Using the state-level enforceability of non-compete agreements (NCAs) as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in key-employee stability, I find that issuers headquartered in states with stricter NCA enforcement experience significantly lower first-day underpricing. A one standard deviation increase in the NCA enforceability score reduces underpricing by 1.4 percentage points, roughly 7.2% of the sample mean. The effect is stronger for innovation-intensive issuers and those facing greater skilled-labor risk, where the value of preserving key human capital is...	Jimmy Chengyuan Qu
8	2018	Diffusion of Ideas and Network Linkages ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a paper on how ideas spread through networks, which is highly relevant to knowledge diffusion and spillovers. While it does not explicitly mention labor mobility or firms, network linkages often serve as a channel for worker-mediated technology transfer, so it is likely pertinent to the project. No abstract available.	Has van Vlokhoven
8	2022	Diffusion of ideas in networks with endogenous search ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through endogenous search and learning from connected agents, which maps well to the project’s focus on knowledge spillovers and frictions in the transmission of ideas. While it is not specifically about worker mobility, inventors, or labor-market policies like non-competes, its network-based mechanism for diffusion and aggregate productivity effects provides useful theory for understanding how frictions and connections shape knowledge flow. I study the diffusion of technology when the decision to search for productivity-enhancing technologies depends on the network of interactions between agents. Agents have the option to engage in costly learning from their first-degree connections. The more productive an agent's connections, the higher the gains from learning. Hence, the network affects the reservation productivity at which agents choose to learn and, therefore, affects aggregate productivity. I find that the denser the network, the higher total factor productivity and the lower inequality on average. This effect is due to less dispersed gains from learning across nodes when network density increases. Despite the increase in...	Has van Vlokhoven
8	2026	Quantifying Decoupling in Global Production and Trade ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion through trade and multinational production, which are important channels for knowledge spillovers and growth in your project. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions directly, its analysis of endogenous knowledge accumulation, integration patterns, and welfare effects from diffusion frictions is highly relevant to the broader question of how knowledge spreads across firms and countries. We analyze the welfare implications of global trade and multinational production (MP) fragmentation across countries, U.S. states, and time. Using a semi-endogenous growth model with subnational regions and technology diffusion through trade and MP, combined with bilateral flow data from 2000–2019, we recover changes in bilateral costs. Cost changes during 2016–2019 produce sizable, heterogeneous welfare effects, with MP costs driving most cross-country variation. Endogenous knowledge accumulation substantially amplifies these gains beyond static estimates. We classify countries as China-integrating, US-integrating, or non-integrating based on cost changes, finding frequent misalignment...	Sheng Cai, Wei Xiang, Yu Zhao
8	2020	Jacks of All Trades and Masters of One: Declining Search Frictions and Unequal Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how search frictions in the labor market shape productivity growth through better worker-job matches, which is a central mechanism in knowledge diffusion and firm performance. While it does not focus explicitly on worker mobility across firms as a channel of technology transfer, it is highly relevant for understanding how reduced frictions affect matching quality, wage dispersion, and aggregate productivity. Declining search frictions generate productivity growth by allowing workers to find jobs for which they are better suited. The return of declining search frictions on productivity varies across different types of workers. For workers who are "jacks of all trades"-in the sense that their productivity is nearly independent from the distance between their skills and the requirements of their job-declining search frictions lead to minimal productivity growth. For workers who are "masters of one trade"-in the sense that their productivity is very sensitive to the gap between their individual skills and the requirements of their job-declining search frictions lead to fast productivity growth. As...	Paolo Martellini, Guido Menzio
8	2025	Labor Market Dynamics and Growth ↗ This paper is closely related because it embeds technological diffusion into a search-and-matching labor market model, directly connecting worker matching frictions with knowledge transmission and growth. While it is more focused on aggregate labor market dynamics and unemployment than on worker mobility per se, its treatment of imitation, diffusion, and endogenous growth is highly relevant to the project’s core mechanisms. Abstract This paper seeks to understand the implications of incorporating economic growth into a search-theoretic model of the labor market. To this end, a technological diffusion process is embedded into the canonical search and matching model of the labor market. New matches imitate the production process of incumbents. Although the canonical model is only modified slightly, there are stark differences in economic intuition across the two models. Market tightness is equilibrated through a different margin, and comparative statics of the two models are qualitatively different. Additionally, the model with endogenous growth—consistent with empirical data—generates stronger unemployment...	Jake Bradley, Axel Gottfries
8	2015	Corporate R&D Spillovers and Investment in the Innovation Network ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a paper about how firms' R&D affects other firms through a network of spillovers, which is closely related to knowledge diffusion and technology transfer. It may be less directly about worker mobility or labor market frictions, but it is highly relevant to the broader theme of innovation spillovers and firm-level interactions in the diffusion process. No abstract available.	Alex Xi He
8	2022	A Penny for Your Thoughts ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how lower communication costs increase the exchange of scientific knowledge and the production of new technologies, which speaks directly to mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and innovation. It does not focus on worker mobility or labor-market frictions like non-competes, but it provides strong empirical evidence on a complementary channel for technology diffusion across locations and inventors. How do communication costs affect the production of new ideas and inventions? To answer this question, we study the introduction of the Uniform Penny Post in Great Britain in 1840. This reform replaced the previous system of expensive distance-based postage fees with a uniform low rate of one penny for sending letters anywhere in the country. The result was a large spatially-varied reduction in the cost of communicating across locations. We study the impact of this reform on the production of scientific knowledge using citation links constructed from a leading academic journal, the Philosophical Transactions and the impact on the development of new technology using patent data. Our results...	W. Walker Hanlon, Stephan Heblich, Ferdinando Monte, et al.
8	2024	Import Competition, Knowledge Diffusion, and Innovation <br> ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it explicitly links import competition with knowledge diffusion and innovation, both central to how ideas spread across firms and affect technological change. Even without worker mobility in the title, trade-driven exposure can interact with firm learning, spillovers, and inventive activity, making it likely to speak to the broader diffusion-and-growth mechanism. No abstract available.	Reshad N. Ahsan, Pavel Chakraborty
8	2025	The Travel of Ideas in a Multi-Sector World ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a paper about how ideas move across sectors, which is highly relevant to technology diffusion and knowledge spillovers. It may not focus specifically on worker mobility or labor frictions, but it likely addresses the broader mechanisms through which knowledge travels across firms and industries. No abstract available.	Mingguo Ma
8	2025	A Spatial Schumpeterian Economy ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a model of innovation and growth in a spatial setting, which is likely to involve knowledge diffusion, regional spillovers, and firm location decisions—core ingredients of the project. It may not focus directly on worker mobility or labor market frictions, but a Schumpeterian spatial framework often studies how ideas and technologies spread across places, making it highly relevant. No abstract available.	Qirui Wang
8	2025	BKK Meets Romer: International Business Cycles in the Knowledge Economy ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies trade as a channel for cross-border knowledge diffusion, using patents, citations, and an innovation model to explain how ideas move across countries and affect productivity. It is less directly about worker mobility or labor-market frictions, but it is highly relevant to the broader question of how technology diffuses and how such diffusion shapes aggregate productivity and innovation. International trade moves ideas, not just goods. This paper studies how trade transmits macroeconomic shocks through knowledge diffusion and its implications for international business cycles. Using multi-country data on bilateral trade, patents, and citations, we document that countries with stronger trade linkages exhibit stronger GDP and TFP comovement and more intensive cross-border knowledge flows. Trade disruptions, identified from the U.S.--China trade war, reduce exports, patenting, and foreign knowledge absorption. We build an international real business-cycle model in which trade-mediated knowledge diffusion shapes innovation efficiency and thus aggregate productivity. The...	Chengyuan He, Sibo Liu, Wentao Zhou
8	2015	Understanding Technology Diffusion: The Role of International Trade and Factor Movements ↗ [Title only] This title is strongly related because it explicitly studies technology diffusion and factor movements, which likely includes labor mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer across locations or firms. The international trade angle may broaden the focus beyond worker movement alone, but the core mechanism aligns well with your project’s themes of diffusion through mobility and frictions. No abstract available.	Thomas Lebesmuehlbacher
8	2017	Industrial Espionage and Productivity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies a direct channel of technology diffusion—industrial espionage—and quantifies its impact on sectoral productivity gaps. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, it is highly relevant for understanding how knowledge transfers across firms and regions and how such transfers affect aggregate productivity. In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage by linking information from East Germany's foreign intelligence service to sector-specific gaps in total factor productivity (TFP) between West and East Germany. Based on a dataset that comprises the entire flow of information provided by East German informants over the period 1970–1989, we document a significant narrowing of sectoral West-to-East TFP gaps as a result of East Germany's industrial espionage. This central finding holds across a wide range of specifications and is robust to the inclusion of several alternative proxies for technology transfer. We further demonstrate that the economic returns to...	Albrecht Glitz, Erik Meyersson
8	2026	A new method for the early detection of important inventions ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how technical ideas diffuse through patents and uses that diffusion to identify important inventions, which speaks directly to knowledge diffusion and technology transmission. It is less direct on worker mobility or labor-market frictions, but it is useful for understanding the measurement of inventive spillovers and the diffusion process that the project centers on. We develop a method for early detection of important inventions by tracking how quickly technical concepts diffuse across patent texts. Using natural language processing on approximately 10 million patents (1920-2024) granted by the USPTO, we identify transformative inventions based on the principle that they contain fast-diffusing ideas. Our method produces predictions closely aligned with frontier measures of patent novelty, significance, breakthroughs, and economic value, but does so significantly earlier than existing methods allow.	Tom Kemeny, Sergio Petralia, Michael Storper
8	2026	The Innovation Race: Experimental Evidence on Advanced Technologies ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how firms’ technology adoption responds to information about competitors, which speaks directly to technology diffusion and information frictions. While it does not focus on worker mobility or labor-market frictions, it provides causal evidence on a mechanism that can shape the rate and direction of diffusion across firms. We present a large-scale field experiment test of strategic complementarities in firms' technology adoption. Our experiment was embedded in a Bank of Italy survey covering around 3,000 firms. We elicited firms' beliefs about competitors' adoption of two advanced technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. We randomly provided half of the sample with accurate information about adoption rates. Most firms substantially underestimated competitors' current adoption, and when provided with information, they updated their expectations about competitors' future adoption. The information increased firms' own intended future adoption of robotics: a 1 pp increase in the share of...	Zoë Cullen, Ester Faia, Elisa Guglielminetti, et al.
8	2018	The Allocation of Scientific Talent* ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how scientific talent is allocated across firms and how R&D investment affects the production and diffusion of knowledge. Its focus on inefficiencies in researcher allocation and absorptive capacity connects directly to worker mobility, firm hiring, and the aggregate consequences of knowledge transfer, even though it is less specifically about labor market frictions like non-competes or search. Abstract I consider a model in which firms produce new knowledge by building laboratories and hiring researchers in a competitive market. I show that, for a given distribution of laboratories, the allocation of researchers to firms can be efficient or inefficient, depending on how fast the firms’ marginal return on the knowledge produced decreases with the amount of knowledge produced. I then argue that the allocation of researchers to laboratories is likely to be inefficient if firms invest in research and development primarily to increase their absorptive capacity (i.e., their ability to use the stock of publicly available knowledge). When the distribution of laboratories is endogenous, a...	Andrea Canidio
8	2020	Innovation and imitation ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies technology diffusion across firms through imitation and innovation, which is central to understanding knowledge spillovers and productivity growth. Although it does not focus on worker mobility or labor market frictions, its models of firm-to-firm technology transfer speak directly to the broader diffusion mechanism in the project. We study several models of growth driven by innovation and imitation by a continuum of firms, focusing on the interaction between the two. We first investigate a model on a technology ladder where innovation and imitation combine to generate a balanced growth path (BGP) with compact support, and with productivity distributions for firms that are truncated power-laws. We start with a simple model where firms can adopt technologies of other firms with higher productivities according to exogenous probabilities. We then study the case where the adoption probabilities depend on the probability distribution of productivities at each time. We finally consider models with a finite number of firms...	Jess Benhabib, Éric Brunet-Gouet, Mildred Hager
8	2021	In knowledge we trust: Learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventors' productivity depends on interactions with co-workers, firm colleagues, and geographically co-located peers, which speaks directly to knowledge diffusion through labor-linked networks. It is especially relevant for understanding the role of proximity and organizational structure in transferring knowledge, though it focuses more on interaction effects than on mobility frictions like non-competes or worker movement policies. Innovation rarely happens through the actions of a single person. Innovators source their ideas while interacting with their peers, at different levels and with different intensities. In this paper, we exploit a dataset of disambiguated inventors in European cities to assess the influence of their interactions with co-workers, organizationsâ€™ colleagues, and geographically co-located peers, to understand if the different levels of interaction influence their productivity. Following inventorsâ€™ productivity over time and adding a large number of fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity, we uncover critical facts, such as the importance of city knowledge stocks for inventorsâ€™...	Matteo Tubiana, Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
8	2018	Knowledge spillovers and patent citations: trends in geographic localization, 1976-2015 ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies the geography of knowledge spillovers using patent citations, which is central to understanding how ideas diffuse across firms and locations. It is useful background for the project’s questions about the rate and direction of knowledge diffusion, though it focuses more on spatial localization of citations than on worker mobility or labor market frictions as the transmission mechanism. This paper examines the trends in geographic localization of knowledge spillovers via patent citations, considering US patents from the period of 1976-2015. Despite accelerating globalization and widespread perception of the \\death of distance," our multi-cohort \\matched-sample" study reveals significant and growing localization effects of knowledge spillovers at both intra- and international levels after the 1980s. We also develop a novel network index based on the notion of \\farness," which an instrumental variable estimation shows to be a significant and sizable determinant of the observed trends at the state-sector level.	Hyuk-Soo Kwon, Sokbae Lee, Jihong Lee, et al.
8	2025	The role of human interaction in innovation: evidence from the 1918 influenza pandemic in Japan ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how increased costs of human interaction among inventors reduce innovation, which maps directly to the project’s interest in mobility, knowledge diffusion, and frictions that impede idea transmission. Its focus is on inventor interaction rather than worker mobility or labor-market policies like non-competes, but the mechanism of reduced collaboration and fewer new inventor entrants is highly relevant to understanding how frictions affect knowledge creation and diffusion. This study empirically investigates human interaction’s role in innovation by exploiting the 1918 influenza pandemic in Japan from 1918 to 1921, which prohibitively increased the cost of interactions between inventors. Using unique patent bibliographic data for this period, we estimate the pandemic’s impact on innovation in technologies requiring intensive human interaction for invention. Specifically, we define patent technology classes with large fractions of collaborative patents before the pandemic as collaboration-intensive technology, which requires intensive human interaction for invention. Thereafter, we estimate the pandemic’s impact on the invention of collaboration-intensive...	Hiroyasu Inoue, Kentaro Nakajima, Tetsuji Okazaki, et al.
8	2013	Universities and Regional Development This paper is closely related because it studies how knowledge generated in universities diffuses locally through mobile embodied knowledge versus less mobile tacit knowledge, which is central to understanding technology diffusion mechanisms. Although it focuses on regional development and agricultural experiment stations rather than worker mobility or firm-level labor frictions, its core question is how knowledge transfer affects productivity over time. Do universities deliver long-term regional development? Because universities produce low mobility tacit knowledge and high mobility embodied knowledge the answer is unclear. In this paper, we use the establishment of agricultural experiment stations to examine how university research aects long-term regional development. Our analysis of county-level agricultural census data from 1870 to 2000 reveals station establishment increased local land productivity over the medium term. Peak eects imply land a standard deviation closer to university research became 36%	Shawn Kantor, Alexander Whalley
8	2022	The Phd Labor Market: Knowledge Accumulation, Subsidies, and Productivity Differentials ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a labor-market perspective on high-skill workers whose knowledge accumulation may affect productivity, which is closely related to how skilled labor mobility transmits knowledge across firms and the economy. The focus on subsidies and productivity differentials may also connect to policy and aggregate outcomes, though the title does not explicitly mention mobility frictions, non-competes, or spillovers. No abstract available.	Weicheng Chen, Yi-Cheng Kao, Pei‐Ju Liao
8	2020	Declining Business Dynamism Among Our Best Opportunities: The Role of the Burden of Knowledge ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies declining startup formation among highly skilled science and engineering PhD recipients, which speaks directly to how labor market structure affects the creation and diffusion of new technologies. Its emphasis on the burden of knowledge and the comparative advantage of established firms in organizing complex R&D also informs how firm dynamics and knowledge hierarchies shape innovation and business dynamism. We document that since 1997, the rate of startup formation has precipitously declined for firms operated by U.S. PhD recipients in science and engineering. These are supposedly the source of some of our best new technological and business opportunities. We link this to an increasing burden of knowledge by documenting a long-term earnings decline by founders, especially less experienced founders, greater work complexity in R&D, and more administrative work. The results suggest that established firms are better positioned to cope with the increasing burden of knowledge, in particular through the design of knowledge hierarchies, explaining why new firm entry has declined for high-tech...	Thomas B. Åstebro, Serguey Braguinsky, Yuheng Ding
8	2023	The Effect of Regulation on Inventor Mobility and Productivity ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility as a response to firm-level frictions and shows how such mobility affects subsequent productivity and innovation outcomes. It speaks directly to the project’s themes of skilled-worker movement, knowledge allocation across firms, and the impact of policy-induced constraints on innovation, though it focuses on regulatory burden rather than non-competes or search frictions. Using new data on the compliance burden of regulation, I study how US administrative agencies affect innovation activities in public firms, which spend the most on R&D and produce the majority of innovation. I present evidence that firm-specific regulatory burden reduces patent output of public firms, but find little change in innovation capital (R&D). To examine innovation labor, I conduct inventor-level analyses, and provide evidence that inventors leave their firms and industries to avoid high burden environments. These turnover events sharply decrease subsequent individual productivity. In sum, I find that regulatory burden constrains innovative firms and reallocates high skilled labor...	Torin McFarland
8	2025	The Not-So-Uniform Effects of Trade Secret Protection on Business Entry ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how stronger trade secret protection affects business entry, which is a key labor-market and institutional channel influencing knowledge diffusion, firm dynamics, and the reallocation of innovative activity. Although it does not directly analyze worker mobility or inventor movement, the observed entry suppression among startups and small firms is highly relevant to understanding how non-compete-like IP protections can impede the spread of know-how and reshape the direction of innovation and firm growth. We explore the consequences of trade secret protection for new business formation in the United States. We find the states that adopt the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), which enhances intellectual property rights, experience an overall decline in firm and establishment entry rates. This result is driven by the reduction in the establishment entry rates of start-ups and small firms. By contrast, the law increases the establishment entry rates of incumbents and larger firms. The negative impact of the UTSA is larger in industries that rely more on intellectual assets and trade secrets, as well as external-finance-dependent industries. (JEL K11, K22, L11, M13, O34, O38)	Aslı Leblebicioğlu, Tanseli Savaşer
8	2025	Talent Hoarding, Misallocation, and Innovation: A Dynamic Model of Labor Market Distortions by Large Incumbents ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a paper about how large incumbent firms distort labor market allocation by hoarding talent, which is closely related to worker mobility frictions and their effects on innovation. The dynamic model framing and emphasis on misallocation and innovation make it highly relevant to knowledge diffusion, firm incentives, and aggregate productivity consequences, though it may focus more on market power than direct spillovers. No abstract available.	Shaolong Wu, Zefan Qian
8	2025	Who Leads in Immigrant Engineer Innovation? The Shift from Developed to Developing Countries ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how the mobility of highly skilled workers, specifically immigrant engineers, affects firm innovation and the diffusion of knowledge across countries and firms. It is especially relevant to the project’s focus on skilled labor migration as a mechanism for technology transfer, though it is less directly about labor market frictions like non-competes or search costs. Abstract Many developed countries have faced labor shortages recently, intensifying competition for highly skilled immigrants. This study examines immigrant engineers and the evolving role of innovation played by those from developed and developing countries. Using original panel data for Japanese firms across ten industries between 1970 and 2019, the study employs a knowledge production function model to analyze immigrant engineers’ changing impact on innovation. The analysis reveals that in the 1970s, immigrant engineers had no significant effect on innovation output; however, after the 1980s onward, their influence became significant. Since the 2000s, the impact of engineers from...	Ayano Fujiwara
8	2015	Quit Turnover and the Business Cycle: A Survey ↗ This survey is closely related because it focuses on quit turnover, on-the-job search, and search-and-matching frictions, all of which are central to understanding worker mobility and how labor market frictions shape the movement of workers across firms. It is less directly about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, but it provides important theoretical background for how turnover and mobility affect firm dynamics and aggregate employment fluctuations. The focus of this chapter is to consider new developments in the search and matching literature where wages, quit turnover and unemployment are endogenously determined in economies with aggregate shocks. The aim of the discussion is not only to highlight possible market failures but also to explain how on-the-job search and employee turnover fundamentally affect our understanding of fluctuations in aggregate employment.	Carlos Carrillo‐Tudela, Melvyn Coles
8	2017	Learning by Hiring, Network Centrality and Within-Firm Wage Dispersion ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker mobility as a channel for knowledge transfer across firms through learning-by-hiring, which is central to your project’s focus on diffusion of technology and tacit knowledge. Its network-based analysis of firm connectivity and wage dispersion adds useful evidence on how labor mobility shapes knowledge flows, though it is more about within-firm wage inequality than aggregate productivity or policy frictions like non-competes. In this paper, we highlight knowledge as specific channel through which labour mobility affects conditional within-firm wage dispersion. We present a model in which workers acquire knowledge on the job and firms pursue a policy of learning-by-hiring. The latter generates workers flows that connect firms in a network. A firm’s position in the network depends on its capacity to absorb the tacit knowledge developed by other firms in the economy. The model predicts that firms central to the network, those with the highest absorptive capacity of tacit knowledge, have the highest wage dispersion. Using 1995-2001 Veneto (a region of Italy) matched employer-employee data, we map workers flows...	Ambra Poggi, Piergiovanna Natale
8	2020	Quantifying Sources of Labor Market Power ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market frictions that shape worker mobility, on-the-job search, and firm wage-setting power, all of which are central to understanding how knowledge can move across firms. While it does not directly focus on technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its quantitative treatment of monopsony, search frictions, and outside options is highly relevant for the project’s broader mechanism of labor-market-driven knowledge transfer. Theoretically, monopsony power of the firms relative to their workers can come in many forms, each causing wages to be less than marginal revenue products of labor, but each having different welfare and policy implications. These include worker-firm specific amenities, search frictions, the density of outside options available through on the job search, and strategic interaction between finite employers. Meanwhile lower bargaining power of workers may further depress wages. How important are each of these for wages and welfare? To answer these questions we contribute a quantitative model with a finite number of firms (e.g. Berger et al, 2020; and Nimcsik et al, 2020), strategic wage setting...	Kyle Herkenhoff, David Berger, Simon Mongey
8	2024	On the Job Search and Business Cycles ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search and labor market frictions, which are central to how worker movement reallocates labor across firms and affects aggregate outcomes. While it is not specifically about knowledge diffusion or inventor mobility, its framework on worker mobility, firm competition, and endogenous job reallocation is highly relevant for understanding how movement frictions shape the transmission of productivity and growth. Nous proposons une analyse simple du cycle économique dans un modèle où les travailleurs employés comme les chômeurs cherchent des emplois en présence de frictions d’appariement. Une hiérarchie des emplois découle de leurs productivités hétérogènes. Les entreprises se font concurrence à la Bertrand pour attirer les travailleurs, suivant le protocole d’enchères séquentielles de Postel-Vinay et Robin [2002]. La recherche en emploi (REE) amplifie et propage les chocs agrégés par trois voies : 1) une plus grande élasticité de la fonction d’appariement en présence de REE ; 2) une différence de rendements à l’embauche entre chômeurs et employés, dont les proportions varient naturellement au cours...	Giuseppe Moscarini, Fabien Postel‐Vinay
8	2022	Job Ladder, Human Capital, and the Cost of Job Loss ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies on-the-job search, heterogeneous firms, worker mobility, and how moving between employers affects wage outcomes through human capital and job ladders. While it is not primarily about knowledge diffusion or non-compete policies, its structural framework and focus on mobility frictions and firm-specific capital are highly relevant to understanding how worker movement shapes labor market dynamics and productivity. High-tenure workers who lose their jobs experience a large and prolonged fall in wages and earnings. To quantify the forces behind this empirical regularity, we propose a rich structural model of the labor market with heterogeneous firms, on-the-job search, and firm-specific and general human capital. By jointly matching moments of workers’ mobility and wages, the model can replicate the losses in earnings and wages observed in the data. The loss of a job with a more productive employer is the primary driver of the cumulated wage losses post-displacement (50 percent), followed by the loss of firm-specific human capital (30 percent).	Richard Audoly, Federica De Pace, Giulio Fella
8	2024	Functional Differencing in Networks ↗ This paper is closely related because it develops methods for estimating employer-employee network models, which are central to studying worker mobility and how knowledge may منتقل across firms through matches and separations. Its focus is econometric rather than substantive, but the application to matched employer-employee data and AKM-style labor market networks makes it highly relevant for analyzing labor mobility frictions and firm effects on diffusion. Les interactions économiques se produisent souvent dans des réseaux où des agents hétérogènes (tels que des travailleurs ou des entreprises) s’associent et produisent. Cependant, la plupart des approches d’estimation existantes nécessitent que le réseau soit dense, ce qui est en contradiction avec de nombreux réseaux empiriques, ou elles imposent des restrictions sur la forme de l’hétérogénéité et la formation du réseau. Nous montrons comment l’approche des différences fonctionnelles introduite par Bonhomme [2012] dans le contexte des données de panel peut être appliquée dans des environnements de réseau pour dériver des restrictions de moment sur les paramètres du modèle et les effets...	Stéphane Bonhomme, Kevin Dano
8	2006	Worker Turnover, Capital Dispersion, and Matching ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies worker turnover, search frictions, and matching in firm-labor markets, which are central mechanisms in how mobility affects the diffusion of knowledge and technology. While it does not directly analyze inventors or spillovers, its evidence on how firm characteristics like wages, capital intensity, and industry context shape mobility and posting is highly relevant to understanding frictions that govern worker movement and thus knowledge transfer. Abstract. A model acknowledging technology and wage dispersion, search frictions, and costly worker turnover is used for testing the notion of random matching. Using a linked employer–employee data set on roughly 9,000 Norwegian establishments and 200,000 jobs during the period 1989–95, I show that establishments investing more in capital, pay more, and experience lower worker turnover rate. Strictly convex turnover costs are identified. High‐wage establishments post on average less intensively than low‐wage establishments. Positive relationships between wages and posting are observed for high‐tech industries and in the capital and surroundings. Thus, the notion of random matching is...	Harald Dale‐Olsen
8	2015	Accounting for Mismatch Unemployment ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market frictions and barriers to job and worker mobility, which are central to how knowledge and technology diffuse through worker movement. While it focuses on mismatch unemployment rather than firm-to-firm spillovers or innovation outcomes, its accounting of mobility frictions is highly relevant for understanding how constraints on labor mobility shape the diffusion of skills and information. We investigate unemployment due to mismatch in the United States over the past three and a half decades. We propose an accounting framework that allows us to estimate the contribution of each of the frictions that generated labor market mismatch. Barriers to job mobility account for the largest part of mismatch unemployment, with a smaller role for barriers to worker mobility. We find little contribution of wage-setting frictions to mismatch.	Benedikt Herz, Thijs van Rens
8	2011	Does Everybody Need Good Neighbors? Labor Mobility Costs, Cities and Matching ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a paper about labor mobility frictions and matching in cities, which is closely related to worker mobility, search frictions, and how moving costs shape labor market outcomes. The reference to cities and matching also fits broader questions about diffusion and allocation of workers across firms, though the title alone does not clearly indicate a direct focus on knowledge spillovers or innovation. No abstract available.	Liqiu Zhao, Wouter Torfs
8	2024	Job Seekers and Job Hirers: Equilibrium Matching and Disequilibrium Stocks and Flows ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a labor market matching framework focused on job seekers, job hirers, and the dynamics of stocks and flows, which is highly relevant to worker mobility and search frictions. It is less directly about knowledge diffusion or innovation than some papers in the project, but it could still provide useful equilibrium labor-market machinery for studying how frictions shape movement across firms. No abstract available.	G. C. Lim, Robert Dixon
8	2021	The Dynamics of Referral Hiring and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Brazil ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies referral hiring as a search mechanism that shapes firm labor demand, information flows, and employee retention, all of which are central to understanding how worker movement and hiring frictions affect knowledge diffusion. While it focuses on racial inequality rather than technology transfer or inventors specifically, its search-model framework and evidence on network-based hiring dynamics are highly relevant to labor market frictions and firm-level matching in the project. We study how referral hiring contributes to racial inequality in firm-level labor demand over the firm’s life cycle using data from Brazil. We consider a search model where referral networks are segregated, firms are more informed about the match quality of referred candidates, and some referrals are made by nonreferred employees. Consistent with the model, we find that firms are more likely to hire candidates and less likely to dismiss employees of the same race as the founder, but these differences diminish as firms’ cumulative hires increase. Referral hiring helps to explain racial differences in dismissals, seniority, and employer size. JEL Classification Codes: D83, J15, J23, J42, J63...	Conrad Miller, Ian M. Schmutte
8	2023	The New Labor Antitrust ↗ [Title only] This title is likely highly relevant because labor antitrust typically concerns employer collusion, non-compete-like restrictions, wage suppression, and other frictions that shape worker mobility and labor market competition. While it may not focus specifically on knowledge diffusion or innovation, these labor market constraints are directly connected to how workers move across firms and how spillovers and productivity effects may be altered. No abstract available.	Eric A. Posner
8	2024	Digitalization, Change in Skill Distance between Occupations and Worker Mobility: A Gravity Model Approach ↗ [Title only] This paper appears highly relevant because it links digitalization to changes in skill distance between occupations and worker mobility, which likely speaks directly to how technology changes labor market reallocation and knowledge diffusion. The gravity model approach suggests an emphasis on flows between occupations, making it potentially useful for studying frictions, matching, and the movement of skilled workers, though the title does not explicitly mention firms, innovation, or spillovers. No abstract available.	Arnaud Dupuy, Morgan Raux, Sara Signorelli
8	2025	Ownership Network and Job Mobility ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a study of how firm ownership links shape worker movement across jobs, which is directly relevant to labor mobility and potential channels of knowledge diffusion. It may also speak to frictions or constraints in movement through corporate structure, though the title alone does not guarantee a focus on innovation or spillovers. No abstract available.	Farshad Ravasan
8	2025	Firm dynamics, monopsony, and aggregate productivity differences ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how labor market power shapes firm growth, entrepreneurship, and technology adoption, which are central channels in the project’s interest in how labor market frictions affect knowledge diffusion and productivity. It does not focus specifically on worker mobility, inventor movement, or non-compete agreements, but its emphasis on monopsony-driven distortions to innovation and diffusion makes it highly relevant background. This paper studies how labor market power affects firm dynamics and aggregate productivity. We build a dynamic model of neoclassical monopsony with occupational choice, firm growth, and productivity-enhancing technology adoption. Labor market power lowers efficiency and leads to aggregate output losses by distorting the allocation of labor, entrepreneurship, and innovation decisions. The model is consistent with cross-country evidence of higher life cycle firm growth and higher productivity investment in more competitive labor markets and can explain 25 percent of the differences in aggregate productivity across countries. We find that about 85 percent of the losses are attributable to the...	Tristany Armangué-Jubert, Tancredi Rapone, Alessandro Ruggieri
8	2024	Models of Wages and Mobility in Frictional Labor Markets with Random Search ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies wage determination and worker mobility in frictional labor markets, which are central to understanding how labor market frictions shape movement across firms. While it is more about search, contract competition, and mobility than direct knowledge diffusion or innovation, the mechanisms it analyzes are highly relevant for modeling how frictions like non-competes or search costs affect worker flows and therefore spillovers. J’étudie les modèles de détermination de l’équilibre des salaires et de la mobilité avec frictions sur le marché du travail. La recherche d’un emploi est aléatoire. La concurrence entre les entreprises se fait en termes de promesses de valeur faites aux travailleurs. La nature exacte de cette concurrence dicte la répartition des promesses de valeur dans l’économie. La mobilité des travailleurs et l’allocation des emplois sont souvent comprises directement à partir de cette partie du modèle. L’étude détaille comment les restrictions sur les contrats de travail traduisent les valeurs des contrats en salaires .	Rasmus Lentz
8	2013	Una aproximación a la identificación, medición y generación de los spillovers recíprocos ↗ This paper is closely related because it explicitly discusses spillovers generated through worker mobility between firms, patent citations, and technology transfer, which are central channels in the project. It also connects these spillovers to firm agglomeration, multinational location, and regional networks, making it useful background for understanding how knowledge diffusion occurs across firms and places. En este documento se examina la literatura sobre los spillovers recíprocos, con el fin de contribuir a la comprensión que tienen estas externalidades en la organización industrial, la localización de las firmas multinacionales y la aglomeración de empresas. Pese a que la captura y representación de esta clase de externalidades ha sido objeto de críticas, aquí se recogen algunos trabajos que muestran la naturaleza e importancia de los spillovers recíprocos. Se aplicó el método bibliométrico de análisis de citas usando la base de datos Google Scholar. Se evidencia que los spillovers recíprocos se manifiestan a través de las citas de patentes, movilidad de la mano de obra entre empresas, el...	Henry Caicedo Asprilla
8	2012	Prolific Inventor Productivity and Mobility: A Western/Asian comparison. Evidence from US Patent Data for 12 Countries This paper is closely related because it studies inventor productivity and mobility using patent data, which directly connects to worker movement as a mechanism for knowledge diffusion. It is especially relevant for understanding how inventor mobility may affect innovation outcomes across countries, although the abstract is too brief to confirm whether it analyzes labor market frictions or policy impacts. prolific inventor, mobility, productivity	Christian Le Bas
8	2012	Prolific Inventor Productivity and Mobility: Evidence from Patenting Data for 11 Countries This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility and its relationship to productivity using patenting data, which is central to understanding how skilled-worker movement affects innovation and knowledge diffusion. While the abstract is brief, cross-country evidence on prolific inventors is likely useful for analyzing how mobility patterns influence the rate and direction of technological spillovers. prolific inventor, mobility, productivity, patenting data	Christian Le Bas
8	2021	Inventor U-turns ↗ This paper is closely related because it deals with inventor mobility measurement, which is central to studying how knowledge diffuses through worker movement across firms. Its main contribution is methodological—cleaning patent data to correctly identify apparent mobility events—so it is useful for empirical work on inventor migration, spillovers, and the effects of mobility frictions, though it does not itself analyze those mechanisms. Code and data for detecting "u-turns" among inventors. If two inventors have been "lumped" into a single inventor ID, or if a single inventor patents concurrently with multiple assignees, it may appear that the inventor is moving repeatedly when in fact something is going on. Uturns.py detects these "u-turns" in the patent data and labels them so that researchers can either exclude them from inventor mobility tables or check them manually. The input file Order.inventor.geo.assignee.combo.disambig.txt.7z is a compressed file of patent data with the pipe-delimited format patent #\|inventor ID\|assigneeid\|application date\| internal ID \| grant date \| inventor name \| last name \| first name \|...	Matt Marx
8	2025	Monopolizing Minds: How M&As Stifle Innovation Through Labor Market Power ↗ [Title only] This title strongly suggests a link between mergers and acquisitions, labor market power, and reduced innovation, which fits the project’s interest in how firm power affects worker mobility, retention, and knowledge diffusion. It may focus more on monopsony and innovation effects than direct worker movement or inventor mobility, but the labor-market channel makes it highly relevant. No abstract available.	Alex Xi He, Jing Xue
8	2019	Collaborative patents and the mobility of knowledge workers This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility and prior co-location facilitate knowledge-worker collaboration and the formation of collaborative patents, which is a direct channel of technology diffusion. It also speaks to how geographical and other frictions shape the speed and direction of knowledge transfer across regions, though it is more about collaboration formation than firm-level labor market frictions or policy impacts. This study explores the importance of the mobility of knowledge workers (i.e., inventors) for the formation of collaborative patents across different regional contexts. In particular, it looks at a sample of co-inventors in the biotechnology industry in Europe, and estimates the factors that speed up the years needed for collaboration. It tests and finds that collaborations between two separated inventors emerge faster if they were located in the same geographical area in the past, even after controlling for a large number of meaningful proximities between them. Furthermore, the empirical approach suggests that this ‘previous co-location' premium becomes more valuable when other channels of...	Ernest Miguélez
8	2014	What attracts knowledge workers? The role of space and social networks This paper is closely related because it studies the geographical mobility of skilled workers and inventors, which is a central mechanism in knowledge diffusion across firms and regions. Its focus on physical proximity, job opportunities, and social networks helps explain frictions and channels that affect worker movement, though it is more about determinants of mobility than downstream productivity or innovation effects. The aim of this paper is to identify the determinants of the geographical mobility of skilled individuals, such as inventors, across European regions. Among a large number of variables, we focus on the role of social proximity between inventors' communities. We use a control function approach to address the endogenous nature of networks, and zero-inflated negative binomial models to accommodate our estimations to the count nature of the dependent variable and the high number of zeros it contains. Our results highlight the importance of physical proximity, job opportunities, social networks, as well as other relational variables in mediating this phenomenon.	Ernest Miguélez, Rosina Moreno
8	1992	'Schemes of Practical Utility': Entrepreneurship and Innovation Among 'Great Inventors' in the United States, 1790-1865 This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility, commercialization, and the geographic reallocation of inventive effort toward market-rich districts, which are central to how knowledge diffuses across places and firms. It is less directly about labor market frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes, but it provides strong historical evidence on how entrepreneurial inventors move and respond to incentives, making it useful background for the project. The growth in inventive activity during early American industrialization is explored by examining the careers of 160 inventors credited with important technological discoveries. Analysis of biographical information and complete patent histories through 1865 indicates that these “great inventors” were entrepreneurial and responded systematically to market demand. Their inventions were procyclical and originated disproportionately from localities linked with extensive markets. Although unexceptional in terms of schooling or technical skills, they vigorously pursued the returns to their inventions, redirected their inventive activity to meet emerging needs, and were distinguished by high...	B. Zorina Khan, Kenneth L. Sokoloff
8	2025	Beyond Geographical Localization: Individual Determinants of Knowledge Spillover Absorption in Inventors ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how inventor mobility affects the absorption of knowledge spillovers, directly matching the project’s focus on worker mobility as a mechanism for technology diffusion. Its inventor-level evidence on education, experience breadth, and inter-regional movement also speaks to the micro-foundations of knowledge transfer, though it is more about absorptive capacity than labor market frictions or policy restrictions like non-competes. Purpose: This paper examines how individual-level characteristics shape inventors’ ability to absorb knowledge spillovers. While prior research has focused on firm- or regional-level determinants, this study investigates the micro-foundations of spillover absorption by analyzing how education, experience breadth, and mobility jointly influence knowledge diffusion. Methodology: Using inventor-level data from the PatVal-EU survey covering 6,327 inventors in six European countries, a series of binary probit models estimates the probability of absorbing near and distant knowledge spillovers. Three hypotheses are tested on the influence of labor mobility, knowledge breadth, and depth on...	Haram Lee
8	2023	A structural study of Big Tech firm-switching of inventors in the post-recession era ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies inventor mobility across major firms and links firm switching to patent network structure, productivity, and post-mobility patent impact. It directly informs the project’s questions about how worker movement diffuses knowledge and affects innovation, though it is more descriptive and focused on Big Tech networks than on labor market frictions or policy constraints like non-competes. Complex systems research and network science have recently been used to provide novel insights into economic phenomena such as patenting behavior and innovation in firms. Several studies have found that increased mobility of inventors, manifested through firm switching or transitioning, is associated with increased overall productivity. This paper proposes a novel structural study of such transitioning inventors, and the role they play in patent co-authorship networks, in a cohort of highly innovative and economically influential companies such as the five Big Tech firms (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta) in the post-recession period (2010-2022). We formulate and empirically...	Yidan Sun, Mayank Kejriwal
8	2020	Taxation and Innovation: What Do We Know? ↗ This review is closely related because it explicitly discusses how tax policy affects the geographic mobility of innovation and inventors, which is central to the project’s focus on worker mobility as a channel for knowledge diffusion. It also connects to firm dynamism, productivity, and the composition of innovative activity, offering useful context for understanding how policy shapes innovation incentives and the movement of skilled labor. Tax policies are a wide array of tools, commonly used by governments to influence the economy. In this paper, we review the many margins through which tax policies can affect innovation, the main driver of economic growth in the long-run. These margins include the impact of tax policy on i) the quantity and quality of innovation; ii) the geographic mobility of innovation and inventors across U.S. states and countries; iii) the declining business dynamism in the U.S., firm entry, and productivity; iv) the quality composition of firms, inventors, and teams; and v) the direction of research effort, e.g., toward applied versus basic research, or toward dirty versus clean technologies. We give...	Ufuk Akcigit, Stefanie Stantcheva
8	2025	Subway Construction, Café Talks, and Innovation ↗ [Title only] The title strongly suggests a mechanism for knowledge diffusion through increased face-to-face interactions and worker/idea mobility enabled by transportation infrastructure, which is closely related to spillovers and innovation. While it does not explicitly mention labor market frictions or non-competes, it is likely relevant to how proximity and mobility affect technology transfer and inventive activity. No abstract available.	Lina Meng, Xi Yang, Yinggang Zhou
8	2020	Taxation and Innovation: What Do We Know? ↗ This review is closely related because it explicitly discusses how tax policy affects the geographic mobility of inventors and innovation across places, which connects directly to worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. It also touches on firm dynamism, productivity, and the composition and direction of innovative activity, all of which are relevant to understanding how policy shapes innovation and growth. Tax policies are a wide array of tools, commonly used by governments to influence the economy. In this paper, we review the many margins through which tax policies can affect innovation, the main driver of economic growth in the long-run. These margins include the impact of tax policy on i) the quantity and quality of innovation; ii) the geographic mobility of innovation and inventors across U.S. states and countries; iii) the declining business dynamism in the U.S., firm entry, and productivity; iv) the quality composition of firms, inventors, and teams; and v) the direction of research effort, e.g., toward applied versus basic research, or toward dirty versus clean technologies. We give...	Ufuk Akcigit, Stefanie Stantcheva
8	2026	Patents and Pay: The wage premium and workforce transformation after a firm's first patent ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies how patenting affects wages, workforce composition, and labor mobility, all of which are central to understanding how innovation incentives interact with worker movement. It is especially useful for the project’s themes of firm-specific human capital, labor-market dynamics around innovative firms, and how innovation-related shocks reshape matching and diffusion within the workforce. Wages help shape the incentives for individuals to engage in the innovation process. Prior research has shown that within businesses, patent grants can cause substantial increases in firm productivity that are passed through into higher wages. Beyond this, there is mixed evidence on how the returns to innovation are shared between employees of different skills and occupations. Some studies find that the largest wage premium to working in innovative firms accrues to inventors and top earning employees (Kline et al., 2020) while others find the largest premium accrues to employees in medium and low skill level occupations (e.g., Aghion et al., 2018). Separately, recent studies have...	Brodie Dobson-Keeffe, Michael Falk
8	2023	Measuring the Characteristics and Employment Dynamics of U.S. Inventors ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it focuses on U.S. inventors, a core group for studying worker mobility, knowledge diffusion, and innovation dynamics. Even without explicit mention of mobility or frictions, measuring inventors’ characteristics and employment dynamics likely provides the micro data needed to analyze how inventive talent moves across firms and how that movement affects technology transfer. No abstract available.	Ufuk Akcigit, Nathan Goldschlag
8	2025	Talent Allocation to Startups versus Incumbents: A Cross-Country Experiment for Germany and the United States ↗ [Title only] This title is highly relevant because it appears to study how skilled workers are allocated between startups and incumbents, which is directly connected to worker mobility, matching, and the diffusion of knowledge across firms. The cross-country experiment design for Germany and the United States also suggests it may shed light on how institutional differences shape talent movement and its innovation or productivity consequences. No abstract available.	Patrick Nüß, Ufuk Akcigit, Sabrina Jeworrek, et al.
8	2023	Chapter 8 Labor Market Dynamics When Ideas Are Harder to Find ↗ This chapter is closely related because it studies endogenous growth driven by imitation in a frictional labor market, with worker poaching and job-to-job transitions as the mechanism for technology diffusion. It directly speaks to how labor market frictions shape knowledge transfer, firm dynamics, misallocation, and aggregate growth, though it is more about general imitation and growth slowdown than specific policies like non-competes or inventor mobility. This paper evaluates the impact of slowing economic growth on labor market dynamism and misallocation. It provides a model of endogenous growth via imitation in a frictional labor market. The framework accounts for rich data on worker job-to-job transitions as well as stochastic and lifecycle properties of firm growth and job reallocation. High productivity entrants gradually replace obsolescing incumbents by poaching their workers, a process that is intermediated via a frictional labor market. When the likelihood of entrants imitating technologies in the tail of the distribution falls (ideas are harder to find), so does growth. Consistent with US data over the past 30 years, firm entry...	Adrien Bilal, Niklas Engbom, Simon Mongey, et al.
8	2023	Chapter 17 Creative Destruction, Distance to Frontier, and Economic Development ↗ This chapter is closely related because it models creative destruction, endogenous firm dynamics, and international knowledge spillovers, all of which speak to how technology diffuses across firms and countries. It is especially relevant for understanding how frontier distance and policy reforms affect selection, firm growth, and aggregate productivity, though it is less directly focused on worker mobility or labor-market frictions. We construct a model of creative destruction with endogenous firm dynamics. We integrate the theory into a general equilibrium multi-country model of technological convergence where countries interact via international spillovers. We derive implications for both firm dynamics and aggregate productivity dynamics. In richer economies, firms are on average larger and the best firms grow larger over time. In poorer economies, there is little creative destruction, low selection, and firms remain small. We estimate the parameters of the model using firm-level data for India and the United States. We study the effect of counterfactual policy reforms. Industrial policy that selectively targets the...	Michael Peters, Fabrizio Zilibotti
8	2026	Migrant Inventors and Environmental-Related Technologies: A Life Cycle Perspective in U.S. MSAs ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies migrant inventors as a channel for knowledge transfer and regional technology diffusion, which is central to how worker mobility spreads ideas across firms and places. It is especially relevant for understanding how inventor mobility affects diversification into new technologies, though it focuses more on regional green-tech development than on labor market frictions, non-competes, or firm-level mobility policies. One important factor in addressing climate change is the development and deployment of environmental-related, or green, technologies (GT). Green technologies are distinct and require specific conditions for development, which vary by their level of technological maturity. Recent studies have focused on the role of migrant inventors in creating these conditions and spurring regional diversification into new technological domains. Regional diversification helps regions avoid lock-in and even escape fossil fuel dependencies. While the contribution of migrants to science and innovation is well documented, little is known about their role in the domain of GT. To fill this gap, we investigate the...	Salvatore Viola, Rosina Navarro i Moreno, Ernest Miguélez, et al.
8	2024	Labor Market Matching, Wages, and Amenities ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies labor market matching and search frictions in a worker-firm setting, with mobility shaped by preference shocks and wage contracting, which are central to understanding how frictions affect worker movement. While it does not focus specifically on technology diffusion or inventor mobility, its decomposition of wage dispersion and mobility frictions provides useful mechanisms for studying how labor market structure can influence knowledge transfer across firms. This paper develops the nonparametric identification of models with production complementarities, worker-firm specific disutility of labor and search frictions.Mobility in the model is subject to preference shocks, and we assume that firms can write wage contracts.We develop a constructive proof for the nonparametric identification of the model primitives from matched employer-employee data.We use the estimated model to decompose the sources of wage dispersion into worker heterogeneity, compensating differentials, and search frictions that generate between-firm and within-firm dispersion.We find that compensating differentials are substantial on average, but the contribution differs greatly...	Thibaut Lamadon, Jeremy Lise, Costas Meghir, et al.
8	2023	Exporting ideas: Knowledge flows from expanding trade in goods This paper is closely related because it studies how trade in goods generates cross-border knowledge flows through patent citations, which is directly relevant to technology diffusion and spillovers. Although it focuses on exporting rather than worker mobility, it provides evidence on the direction and intensity of knowledge transfer and how technological distance shapes diffusion. We examine the effect of entry by French firms into a new export market on the dynamics of their patents' citations received from that destination. Applying a difference-in-differences identification strategy with a staggered treatment design, we show that: (i) entering a new foreign market has a significant impact on the long-run flow of citations; (ii) the impact is mostly driven by the extensive margin; (iii) inventors in destination countries patent mostly in products that do not directly compete with those of the exporting firm; (iv) the spillover intensity decreases with the technological distance between the exporting firm and the destination.	Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Timothée Gigout, et al.
8	2026	Data and Code for: "The Effect of Noncompete Enforceability on Productivity: Evidence from a New State-Level Manufacturing" ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how noncompete enforceability affects productivity, a central policy friction in the project’s interest in worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Although the abstract is about the replication package rather than the substantive findings, the underlying paper directly speaks to how legal restrictions on mobility may shape firm-level and aggregate productivity. The code in this replication package constructs the analysis file from the raw data sources (U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Becker et. al, 2021; Chirinko and Wilson, 2009; Johnson, Lavetti, and Lipsitz, 2025) using Stata. Three script files run all of the code to generate all the data for the 2 figures and 3 tables in the paper. The replicator should expect the code to run for about 10 minutes on a production server (3.2 GHz CPU).<br><br>Constructed data products for "Manufacturing" and "All Industries" can be directly downloaded from the Processed-Data folder.	Katherine Chang, Matthew Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, et al.
8	2026	Data and Code for: "The Effect of Noncompete Enforceability on Productivity: Evidence from a New State-Level Manufacturing" ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies how noncompete enforceability affects productivity, a central policy friction in worker mobility and knowledge diffusion. Its manufacturing and state-level focus makes it especially useful for understanding how restricting labor movement influences firm performance and aggregate innovation-related outcomes. The code in this replication package constructs the analysis file from the raw data sources (U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Becker et. al, 2021; Chirinko and Wilson, 2009; Johnson, Lavetti, and Lipsitz, 2025) using Stata. Three script files run all of the code to generate all the data for the 2 figures and 3 tables in the paper. The replicator should expect the code to run for about 10 minutes on a production server (3.2 GHz CPU).<br><br>Constructed data products for "Manufacturing" and "All Industries" can be directly downloaded from the Processed-Data folder.	Katherine Chang, Matthew Johnson, Kurt Lavetti, et al.
8	2026	The Impact of Non-Competes on Wages and Job Tenure: New Evidence from NLSY Data ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies non-compete agreements, a central labor market friction in the project, and estimates their effects on worker mobility-related outcomes like wages and tenure. While it does not directly measure knowledge diffusion or innovation, its heterogeneous findings by education level are useful for understanding how mobility restrictions may shape incentives and worker retention across skill groups. Non-compete agreements (NCAs) are pervasive even in low-wage labor markets, yet most evidence relies on variation in enforceability rather than NCA incidence. Using longitudinal data from the NLSY97, we study how signing an NCA affects wage trajectories and job tenure. Exploiting complete work histories and applying a clean-controls local projections difference-in-difference design, we find a striking divergence: NCAs are associated with significantly slower wage growth for low education workers over four years, but faster wage growth for high-education workers. Effects on job tenure are imprecisely estimated for both groups.	Tristan Potter, André Kurmann, Bart Hobijn
8	2026	The Impact of Non-Competes on Wages and Job Tenure: New Evidence from NLSY Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it directly studies non-compete agreements, a central labor market friction in your project, and estimates their effects on wages and job tenure using longitudinal worker data. Its heterogeneity by education is also relevant for understanding how mobility restrictions shape the incentives and outcomes for skilled versus less-skilled workers, though it does not directly measure knowledge diffusion or innovation spillovers. Non-compete agreements (NCAs) are pervasive even in low-wage labor markets, yet most evidence relies on variation in enforceability rather than NCA incidence. Using longitudinal data from the NLSY97, we study how signing an NCA affects wage trajectories and job tenure. Exploiting complete work histories and applying a clean-controls local projections difference-in-difference design, we find a striking divergence: NCAs are associated with significantly slower wage growth for low education workers over four years, but faster wage growth for high-education workers. Effects on job tenure are imprecisely estimated for both groups.	Tristan Potter, André Kurmann, Bart Hobijn
8	2026	The Impact of Non-Competes on Wages and Job Tenure: New Evidence from NLSY Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements, a central labor market friction in the project, and how they shape worker mobility outcomes through wages and job tenure. While it does not directly measure knowledge diffusion or innovation spillovers, its heterogeneous effects by skill level are highly relevant for understanding how mobility restrictions may alter the movement of skilled workers and the incentives for firms to retain or compensate them. Non-compete agreements (NCAs) are pervasive even in low-wage labor markets, yet most evidence relies on variation in enforceability rather than NCA incidence. Using longitudinal data from the NLSY97, we study how signing an NCA affects wage trajectories and job tenure. Exploiting complete work histories and applying a clean-controls local projections difference-in-difference design, we find a striking divergence: NCAs are associated with significantly slower wage growth for low education workers over four years, but faster wage growth for high-education workers. Effects on job tenure are imprecisely estimated for both groups.	Bart Hobijn, Tristan Potter, André Kurmann
8	2026	The Impact of Noncompetes on Wages and Job Tenure: New Evidence from NLSY Data ↗ This paper is highly relevant because it studies noncompete agreements, a key labor market friction in your project, and estimates how they shape worker mobility-related outcomes such as wages and job tenure. Although it does not directly measure knowledge diffusion or innovation, its heterogeneous effects by skill level make it useful for understanding how mobility restrictions may alter the incentives and capacity for skilled-worker knowledge transfer. Noncompete agreements (NCAs) are pervasive even in low-wage labor markets, yet most evidence relies on variation in enforceability rather than NCA incidence. Using longitudinal data from the NLSY97, we study how signing an NCA affects wage trajectories and job tenure. Exploiting complete work histories and applying a "clean controls" local projections difference-in-differences design, we find a striking divergence: NCAs are associated with significantly slower wage growth for low-education workers over four years but faster wage growth for high-education workers. Effects on job tenure are imprecisely estimated for both groups.	Tristan Potter, André Kurmann, Bart Hobijn
8	2026	Data and code for: The Impact of Non-Competes on Wages and Job Tenure: New Evidence from NLSY Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements, a key labor market friction that can directly affect worker mobility, job-to-job transitions, and the transmission of knowledge across firms. Its focus on wages and job tenure also speaks to firm retention and the incentives that shape how easily skilled workers can move and potentially diffuse technology. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to study the effects of non-compete agreement (NCA) incidence on wages and job tenure for both low- and high-education workers. To identify these effects, we exploit the complete work histories available in the NLSY97, which allows us to compare job-to-job transitions of workers with an NCA status change to transitions of workers without a change. We apply the “clean controls” local projections difference-in- differences (LP-DiD) methodology, thus addressing concerns about staggered treatment adoption and heterogeneous effects across treatment cohorts that arise with standard two-way fixed effect models.	Tristan Potter, André Kurmann, Bart Hobijn
8	2026	Data and code for: The Impact of Non-Competes on Wages and Job Tenure: New Evidence from NLSY Data ↗ This paper is closely related because it studies non-compete agreements, a key labor market friction that can restrict worker mobility and thereby affect knowledge diffusion across firms. Its focus on wages and job tenure using job-to-job transitions is directly relevant to understanding how mobility constraints shape the movement of workers, though it does not explicitly analyze technology spillovers or innovation outcomes. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to study the effects of non-compete agreement (NCA) incidence on wages and job tenure for both low- and high-education workers. To identify these effects, we exploit the complete work histories available in the NLSY97, which allows us to compare job-to-job transitions of workers with an NCA status change to transitions of workers without a change. We apply the “clean controls” local projections difference-in- differences (LP-DiD) methodology, thus addressing concerns about staggered treatment adoption and heterogeneous effects across treatment cohorts that arise with standard two-way fixed effect models.	Tristan Potter, André Kurmann, Bart Hobijn
8	2024	Labor Market Frictions and Firms' Build-Borrow-Buy Choices ↗ The paper directly analyzes labor market frictions and their impact on firm strategy, specifically regarding the build-borrow-buy choices that determine how firms acquire knowledge through hiring versus acquisition. It provides a theoretical framework for understanding how frictions like non-competes influence the mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and the strategic interactions between firms and workers. This paper uses transaction cost economics and property rights theory to explain how different kinds of labor market frictions may affect firms’ choices among different governance modes of resource acquisition. This paper considers two important dimensions of labor market frictions: the breadth of control rights over employees and the legal enforceability of those control rights. These two different dimensions give rise to four different scenarios where firms may prefer to use alliances or acquisitions (or both). Firm choices depend on whether labor market frictions secure firms’ rights over employees, whether human capital has greater strategic value and whether labor market frictions...	Xiaoshu Bei, Will Mitchell

Technology Diffusion Through Worker Mobility

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