Knowledge

Who pays whom for the use of knowledge?

Intellectual property receipts and payments — the one knowledge flow that is measured in money and has a direction.

Where is research actually done?

Research spending, researcher headcount and patent filings, and the gap between effort and output.

Can a migrant community move an entire industry's technology across an ocean?

Boberg-Fazlić and Sharp study nineteenth-century Danish-American settlements and the US dairy industry. Denmark had developed...

Nina Boberg-Fazlić, Paul Sharp (2023) · American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 15(3)

If information is free, does it still matter how far away your customer is?

Akerman, Leuven and Mogstad use a Norwegian public programme that rolled out broadband access points at different times in...

Anders Akerman, Edwin Leuven, Magne Mogstad (2021) · American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 14(1)

How much of a country's invention is done by people born somewhere else?

Lissoni and Miguélez review what patent and inventor records reveal about migrants and invention. Linking inventors on patents...

Francesco Lissoni, Ernest Miguélez (2024) · Journal of Economic Perspectives 38(1)

Does the arrival of migrants make the places they settle more inventive?

Burchardi, Chaney, Hassan, Tarquinio and Terry build an identification strategy from the interaction between quasi-random...

Konrad Burchardi et al. (2026) · American Economic Review

Does patenting a discovery stop other people building on it?

Sampat and Williams compare human gene sequences that were patented against near-identical sequences whose applications...

Bhaven Sampat, Heidi L. Williams (2019) · American Economic Review 109(1)

Do the friendships between two places predict how much they trade?

Bailey, Cao, Kuchler, Stroebel and Wong introduce a measure of social connectedness built from aggregated, anonymised Facebook...

Michael Bailey et al. (2018) · Journal of Economic Perspectives 32(3)

When cheap imports arrive, do domestic firms innovate their way out or give up?

Matching three decades of US patents to the firms that own them, Autor, Dorn, Hanson, Pisano and Shu find that rising import...

David Autor et al. (2020) · American Economic Review: Insights 2(3)

If a government subsidises research, do firms do more of it — or just claim more?

Dechezleprêtre, Einiö, Martin and Nguyen exploit a change in the asset-based size thresholds determining eligibility for UK...

Antoine Dechezleprêtre et al. (2024) · American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 15(4)

How does an idea invented in one country end up producing goods in another?

Santacreu, Cai and Li model knowledge diffusion across countries and sectors, treating technology as something that spreads...

Ana Maria Santacreu, Jie Cai, Nan Li (2021) · American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 13(4)

Rich countries spend more on research every year. Why is measured productivity growth falling?

The review by Goldin, Koutroumpis, Lafond and Winkler documents a slowdown in productivity growth across advanced economies...

Ian Goldin et al. (2024) · Journal of Economic Literature 62(1)

Does forcing a foreign firm to share its technology actually transfer any?

Barwick, Cao, Li and Bai study China's joint-venture requirement in automobiles, under which foreign carmakers had to partner...

Panle Jia Barwick et al. (2025) · Review of Economic Studies

When shipping technology changes, who does it make rich?

Pascali uses the transition from sail to steam in the nineteenth century as a natural experiment: steamships made trade routes...

Luigi Pascali (2017) · American Economic Review 107(9)

How much of what gets patented rests on publicly funded science?

Marx builds a comprehensive linkage between patents and the scientific articles they cite, a mapping that had not existed at...

Matt Marx (2019) · Strategic Management Journal

Knowledge across borders: patents, research effort and payments for intellectual property

Patent applications split by resident and non-resident filer, research spending and researcher headcount, and the two balance of payments lines...

World Development Indicators: Science and technology

1 World Development Indicators on science and technology, annual, from 1960 where the World Bank has them, for all reporting economies and...