Research Seminar: Dancing With the Stars -Innovations through Interactions

The Growth Lab’s Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.

In this hybrid seminar, Santiago Caicedo, an Associate Professor at the Economics Department and Finance Group at Northeastern University will discuss his research on innovation, which uses a new large-scale panel dataset on European inventors matched to their employers and patents.

Whether attending in person or virtually, please register in advance.

Paper Abstract: An inventor’s own knowledge is a key input in the innovation process. This knowledge can be built by interacting with and learning from others. This paper uses a new large-scale panel dataset on European inventors matched to their employers and patents. We document key empirical facts on inventors’ productivity over the life cycle, inventors’ research teams, and interactions with other inventors. Among others, most patents are the result of collaborative work. Inter- actions with better inventors are very strongly correlated with higher subsequent productivity. These facts motivate the main ingredients of our new innovation-led endogenous growth model, in which innovations are produced by heterogeneous research teams of inventors using inventor knowledge. The evolution of an inventor’s knowledge is explained through the lens of a diffusion model in which inventors can learn in two ways: By interacting with others at an endogenously chosen rate; and from an external, age-dependent source that captures alternative learning channels, such as learning-by-doing.

About the Speaker: Santiago Caicedo is an Associate Professor at the Economics Department and Finance Group at Northeastern University. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. His research connects microdata with economic theory to study social interactions, human capital formation, economic growth, and innovation.