IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/4595.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is distance dying at last?

Author

Listed:
  • Griffith, Rachel
  • Lee, Sokbae
  • Van Reenen, John

Abstract

Economists have long been sceptical of claims about the 'death of distance' - the idea that new technology has diminished the significance of geography for economic outcomes. Research by Sokbae Lee, Rachel Griffith and John Van Reenen, which looks at patent citations over a quarter of a century, finds the first hard evidence that distance is indeed becoming less important. Their study finds that measured by the relative speed of patent citations over time, the flow of ideas between countries is getting quicker. If new ideas are benefiting other countries more quickly, it may make less sense to subsidise corporate R&D.

Suggested Citation

  • Griffith, Rachel & Lee, Sokbae & Van Reenen, John, 2008. "Is distance dying at last?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 4595, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:4595
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/4595/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlo Menon, 2009. "Stars and Comets: An Exploration of the Patent Universe," SERC Discussion Papers 0037, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. Philippe Aghion & Antoine Dechezleprêtre & David Hémous & Ralf Martin & John Van Reenen, 2016. "Carbon Taxes, Path Dependency, and Directed Technical Change: Evidence from the Auto Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 1-51.
    3. Wiljan van den Berge & Jonneke Bolhaar & Roel van Elk, 2017. "Knowledge diffusion across regions and countries: evidence from patent citations," CPB Discussion Paper 348, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:4595. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.