Subway, Collaborative Matching, and Innovation

Abstract

Using rapid expansion of the Beijing subway from 2000 to 2018, we analyze its impact on collaborative matches in innovations. We find that an hour reduction in travel time between a pair of locations in Beijing brought 14.85% to 37.69% increase in collaborated patents. Farapart location pairs were more affected, and the local average causal response is approximately 34.92% to 82.29%. The effect is mainly driven by increased matches among highly productive innovators. The entry of new innovators, relocation of existing innovators, and collaborations among low-productive innovators also contribute to the increase in collaborative matches, especially in the long run.

Collaboration and Connectivity: Historical Evidence from Patent Records

“…Indeed, recent work documents the central role of communication and transport technologies for innovation both in historical and modern contexts (Perlman, 2016;Agrawal et al, 2017;Andersson et al, 2021;Hanlon et al, 2022). Recent evidence further shows that lowering interaction costs may directly facilitate scientific collaboration either through ICT technologies that lower communication costs (Agrawal and Goldfarb, 2008;Aneja and Xu, 2022), or transport infrastructure that facilitate face-to-face interactions (Catalini et al, 2020;Dong et al, 2020;Koh et al, 2022). We contribute novel evidence on how lowering the cost of interacting with others can spur collaboration between inventors.…”