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Inventor Mobility, Human Capital, And The Propensity To Patent, David Youngberg, Joshua Hall

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Using 1975-1992 patent data this article untangles two opposing effects of knowledge spillovers: increasing productivity of invention (encouraging higher-quality patents) and increasing trade secret leakage to competitors (encouraging lower-quality patents). Using geographic labor mobility to predict the former and industry labor mobility in the latter, we find that doubling the rate of industry level labor mobility of scientists and engineers decreases patent quality. Results from doubling the rate of regional level mobility are mixed, but suggest an increase in patent quality.