The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors | Zendy

Enrico Moretti | Zendy

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The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors

Author(s) -

Enrico Moretti

Publication year - 2021

Publication title -

american economic review

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 16.936

H-Index - 297

eISSN - 1944-7981

pISSN - 0002-8282

DOI - 10.1257/aer.20191277

Subject(s) - economies of agglomeration , productivity , externality , economics , cluster (spacecraft) , quality (philosophy) , economic geography , aggregate (composite) , agricultural economics , labour economics , industrial organization , economic growth , microeconomics , materials science , computer science , composite material , programming language , philosophy , epistemology

The high-tech sector is concentrated in a small number of cities. The ten largest clusters in computer science, semiconductors, and biology account for 69 percent, 77 percent, and 59 percent of all US inventors, respectively. Using longitudinal data on 109,846 inventors, I find that geographical agglomeration results in significant productivity gains. When an inventor moves to a city with a large cluster of inventors in the same field, she experiences a sizable increase in the number and quality of patents produced. The presence of significant productivity externalities implies that the agglomeration of inventors generates large gains in the aggregate amount of innovation produced in the United States. (JEL D62, J24, L60, O31, 034, R32)

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