Article2002

Knowledge Spillovers and Inequality

165 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Economic Review

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Economic Growth and Productivity Intellectual Property and Patents Firm Innovation and Growth

Abstract

We develop a dynamic model with knowledge spillovers in production. The model contains two opposing forces. Imitation of other firms helps followers catch up with leaders, but the prospect of doing so makes followers want to free ride. The second force dominates and creates permanent inequality. We show that the greater are the average spillovers and the easier they are to obtain, the greater is the free-riding and inequality. More directed copying raises inequality by raising the free-riding advantages of hanging back. Using Compustat and patent-citation data we find that copying is highly undirected.

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 165 citations exist upstream.

References

1988On the mechanics of economic development 1986Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth 1956A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures 2019American Economic Review 1999Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?1961The Economics of Information 1976The Economics of Information 1999Zipf's Law for Cities: An Explanation

Cited by

2012Estimating the Benefits of Targeted R&D Subsidies 2004Human Capital and Technology Diffusion 2013Catch-up and fall-back through innovation and imitation 2008Spillover Asymmetry and Why It Matters 2016Innovation vs. imitation and the evolution of productivity distributions 2021Reconciling Models of Diffusion and Innovation: A Theory of the Productivity Distribution and Technology Frontier 2010The value‐relevance of corporate reputation during the financial crisis

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.