IVS Seminar

Seminar with

Bruce Weinberg, Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Ohio State University.

"Geography and Innovation: Evidence from Nobel Laureate Physicists."

Social scientists have argued that industrial clusters, like Silicon Valley, are due to information spillovers among innovators, but little quantitative, micro-evidence exists for these effects. Using data on the place of residence of each Nobel laureate physicists for every year of his (or her) career, we estimate these effects. Physicists are more likely to begin the research agenda for which they received the Nobel Prize when they are around more other Nobel laureate physicists, suggesting that spillovers help identify important lines of research. Interestingly, physicists are no more likely to do the work for which they received the Nobel Prize when they are around more other Nobel laureates. The fact that beginning the research agenda is affected by other Nobel laureates but that completing the work is not, suggests that these spillovers are causal.