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Virtually borderless? Cultural proximity and international collaboration of developers

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  • Abou El-Komboz, Lena
  • Goldbeck, Moritz

Abstract

Are national borders an impediment to online collaboration in the knowledge economy? Unlike in goods trade, knowledge workers can collaborate fully virtually, such that border effects might be eliminated. Here we study collaboration patterns of some 144,000 European developers on the largest online code repository platform, GitHub. To assess the presence of border effects we deploy a gravity model that explains developers’ inter-regional collaboration networks. We find a sizable border effect of −16.4%, which is, however, five to six times smaller than in trade. The border effect is entirely explained by cultural factors such as common language, shared interests, and historical ties. The international border effect in Europe is significantly larger than the state border effect in the US, where cross-border cultural differences are much less pronounced, further strengthening our conjecture that culture is a main driver of the border effect in virtual collaboration.

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  • Abou El-Komboz, Lena & Goldbeck, Moritz, 2024. "Virtually borderless? Cultural proximity and international collaboration of developers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:244:y:2024:i:c:s016517652400435x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111951
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Digitization; Software development; Knowledge work; Culture; Language;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F66 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Labor
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O36 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Open Innovation

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