Does Knowledge Accumulation Increase the Returns to Collaboration? Evidence from the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Abstract

Several theories can explain the increasing size of research teams over time. One of these, the knowledge accumulation hypothesis- ‐ that reaching the knowledge frontier is progressively costly over time and results in increasing specialization and collaboration- ‐ raises unique policy implications concerning poverty traps, research grant evaluation procedures, and incentives to enter research careers. However, this hypothesis is difficult to separately identify from other explanations for increasing team size that do not raise the same policy implications. We exploit the collapse of the USSR as an instrument because Soviet research was kept hidden from the outside world and then suddenly released. This created a shock to the knowledge frontier due to socio-‐political events exogenous to the research community. Furthermore, the degree of the shock varies across subfields since Soviet advances were greater in some subfields than others. Using 40 years of publication data in theoretical mathematics covering the period 1970-‐2010, we employ a difference-‐in-‐differences approach to compare the propensity of mathematicians working outside the USSR to collaborate in “Soviet-‐rich ” versus “Soviet-‐poor ” subfields before and after the knowledge frontier shock. Consistent with the theory, we find that team size- ‐ the

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