International business visits and the technology frontier

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in International Business Visits and the Technology FrontierSteve Dowrick Massimiliano Tani The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper studies the impact of international business trips on the stock of knowledge available to an economy. It develops a theoretical model to analyse the possible effects, and presents an empirical application using productivity data for a panel of twelve Australian industries during 1991/2-2005/6. Business trips emerge as a significant source of productivity growth. As the knowledge transferred through business visits is non-rival, both countries of origin and destination can gain from the human capital of travellers. As a result, even countries traditionally disadvantaged by geography, size, or level of economic development have the opportunity to access the latest technology and information to stimulate growth.JEL Classification: F2, J6

Flows of people, flows of ideas, and the inequality of nations

“…Gambardella et al (2003) find a significant relationship between the annual number of airplane passengers (embarked and disembarked) in regions of Europe and regional average labor productivity. Along a similar vein Dowrick and Tani (2008) document a positive impact of business travel on industry level productivity in Australia. To our knowledge, however, the present paper is the first to examine the same issue in the aggregate while addressing the inherent endogeneity of travel.…”

Business visits, knowledge diffusion and productivity

“…Given the dimension and main purpose of business visits, it is not surprising that they positively contribute to knowledge formation and productivity. This relationship is found regardless of how productivity is measured: number of new patents or citations (Hovhannisyan and Keller, 2015), total or multifactor productivity (Andersen and Dalgaard, 2011;Dowrick and Tani, 2011), or other metrics (Hellmanzik, 2013).…”

“…With reference to mobility, a recent stream of work analyses the role of short-term skilled labour movements such as those carried out through business trips in enhancing the international production and diffusion of knowledge (Andersen and Dalgaard, 2011;Dowrick and Tani, 2011;Hovhannisyan and Keller, 2015). These movements cause no change in the permanent headcount of the population in the places of origin and destination but may positively contribute to the stock of productive knowledge available to both countries.…”

South-South technology transfer to Laos through face-to-face contacts

“…Chung, Rosea, and Huang (2012) attempt to link business strategy, organization of immigrant managers, and firm-level performances. In terms of temporal visits, Andersen and Dalgaard (2011) and Dowrick and Tani (2011) examine the relationship between temporal visits and productivity. Hovhannisyan and Keller (2011) measure the effect of United States overseas business travels on patenting.…”