Template-type: ReDif-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Vivarelli, Marco
Author-Name: Piva, Mariacristina
Author-Name: Tani, Massimiliano
Title: The role of business visits in fostering R&D investment
Abstract: Labor mobility is considered a powerful channel to acquire external knowledge and trigger complementarities in the innovation and R&amp;D investment strategies; however, the extant literature has focused on either scientists’ mobility or migration of high-skilled workers, while virtually no attention has been devoted to the possible role of short-term business visits.<br/>Using a unique and novel database originating a country/sector unbalanced panel over the period 1998-2019 (for a total of 8,316 longitudinal observations), this paper aims to fill this gap by testing the impact of BVs on R&amp;D investment.<br/>Results from GMM-SYS estimates show that short-term mobility positively and significantly affects R&amp;D investments; moreover, our findings indicate - as expected - that the beneficial impact of BVs is particularly significant in less innovative countries and in less innovative industries.<br/>These outcomes justify some form of support for BVs within the portfolio of the effective innovation policies, both at the national and local level.
Classification-JEL: o31,o32,o15,j61
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 20250403
Number: 2025-010
File-URL: https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/249262809/wp2025-010.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 812479
Handle: Repec:unm:unumer:2025010
DOI: 10.53330/DTMT2556