Andreas Moxnes, Professor of Economics, University of Oslo, will present his paper on "The Geography of Knowledge Production: Connecting Islands and Ideas."

Abstract:

This paper examines the importance of economic integration on the flow of ideas. During the formation and the production of knowledge, as measured by patent data. Using the geolocation of inventors before the opening of the bridges, we find that inventors close to future bridges increased knowledge production more than inventors far from the bridges. Furthermore, the treated inventors matched to more productive inventors, as measured by co-inventors’ existing patent portfolio. The results are robust to instrumenting for the location of the bridges using the minimum bridge span distances between Shikoku and Honshu. Our results suggest that economic integration can have sizable effects on idea flows and consequently innovation and growth.