Working Papers

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Creative Construction: Knowledge Sharing and Cooperation Between Firms (October 2023)

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Abstract: Knowledge spillovers are often measured using patent citations and are commonly assumed to diffuse across a diverse range of firms. I show that citations are highly concentrated and primarily come from business partners. I provide empirical evidence suggesting that, instead of spillovers, concentrated citations reflect intentional sharing of trade secrets between collaborating firms. The concentration of citations has increased since 2000, especially in technologies more exposed to import competition from China. This rise can be explained by a decrease in intentional knowledge sharing between partners, potentially in response to higher risks of trade secret misappropriation.

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Coverage: The Visible Hand (Episode 30), Faculti

Previous title: “Creative Construction: Knowledge Sharing in Production Networks” 

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Exporting, Global Sourcing, and Multinational Activity: Theory and Evidence from the United States (July 2023)

(joint with Pol Antràs, Teresa Fort, and Felix Tintelnot)

Conditionally Accepted at Review of Economics and Statistics

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Abstract: Multinational firms (MNEs) dominate trade flows, yet their global production decisions are often ignored in firm-level studies of exporting and importing. Using newly merged data on US firms’ trade and multinational activity by country, we show that MNEs are more likely to trade not only with countries in which they have affiliates, but also with other countries within their affiliates’ region. We rationalize these patterns with a new source of firm-level scale economies that arises when country-specific fixed costs to source from, or sell in, a market are shared across all the firm’s plants. These shared fixed costs create interdependencies between a firm’s production and trade locations that generate third-market responses to policy changes.

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Coverage: Becker Friedman Institute