Productivity spillovers are often cited as a reason for geographic specialization in production. A large literature in medicine documents specialization across areas in the use of surgical treatments, which is unrelated to patient outcomes. We show that a simple Roy model of patient treatment choice with productivity spillovers can generate these facts. Our model predicts that high-use areas wi...

In addition to internal R&D, external knowledge is widely considered as an essential lever for innovative performance. This paper analyzes knowledge spillovers in supply chain networks. Specifically, we investigate how supplier innovation is impacted by buyer innovation. Financial accounting data is combined with supply chain relationship data and patent data for U.S. firms in high tech industr...

Voters in democracies can learn from the experience of neighbouring states: about policy in a direct democracy (“policy experimentation”), about the quality of their politicians in a representative democracy (“yardstick competition”). Learning between states creates spillovers from policy choice, and also from constitutional choice. I model these spillovers in a simple principalagent framework,...

This paper investigates whether exporting generates positive productivity spillover effects on other plants operating in the same industry and whether exporting affects productivity of plants in vertically related industries. Using plant-level data from Chile we find that exporters improve productivity of their local suppliers but not of plants that purchase intermediate inputs from them. We al...

We investigate how multinational companies can foster economic development of the host country at the micro level. Traditionally the empirical literature measuring spillovers to the host economy arising from foreign direct investment has focused on productivity spillovers, i.e., technological externalities. In this paper we emphasise that pecuniary externalities from multinationals can also be ...

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in developing countries is expected to foster technology transfer from foreign-owned to local firms. Using detailed panel data from Tunisian manufacturing firms, we show that technological spillovers generated by FDI, as a form of technology transfer, help firms move near the best practice frontier (production frontier) measured by the Schmidt and Sickles method....

This paper analyzes the effects of a potential spillover on technology transfer of a multinational enterprise and on the host country policy. In particular, we examine how both parties’ incentives can be controlled through the ownership structure in an international joint venture. In contrast to existing arguments we show that spillovers must not always have negative effects on technology trans...

Foreign direct investment has been considered a very important factor in the recent growth of Vietnam’s economy and thus far has drawn a great deal of concern from economic researchers in Vietnam. However, studies on the impacts of foreign direct investment on Vietnam’s economy, especially the technological spillovers, are still very scarce compared with other developing countries. This study m...

National surveys of R&D labs across the manufacturing sectors in the US and Japan show that intraindustry R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are greater in Japan than in the US and the appropriability of rents due to innovation less. Patents in particular are observed to play a more central role in diffusing information across rivals in Japan, and appear to be a key reason for greater intraindu...

This paper argues that actual technological spillovers are not substantial in developing countries because of the absence of an absorptive capacity. We carry out a panel data analysis in an attempt to gain insight into the specific aspects that enable economies to benefit from the backlog of existing knowledge. Our findings indicate that low productivity effects of human capital coupled with we...