The Effect of Inventor Collaboration on Mobility: The Role of Technological Complexity and Obsolescence Rate (Job Market Paper)

Abstract

This study aims to examine how team collaboration affects the inter-firm mobility of inventors. Since knowledge accumulated through team collaboration can be complementary or substitute to the teammates, teamwork can affect the relative value of the inventor’s knowledge inside the firm versus the outside value in opposing ways. In this paper, we explore to what extent and in which circumstances teamwork leads to more or less inter-firm mobility. Leveraging on the premature death of collaborators as an exogenous shock to teamwork, we find that inventors who lose a collaborator are more likely to leave their current firm (than otherwise similar inventors). This average negative effect between collaboration and mobility, however, is driven by a particularly intense relationship in technological areas of high complexity and quick obsolescence, suggesting that it is in these areas where collaboration complementarities play a key role in the generation of knowledge.