The Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge Across Time and Space: Evidence from Professional Transitions for the Superstars of Medicine

57 Pages Posted: 18 Jan 2011 Last revised: 1 Feb 2025

See all articles by Pierre Azoulay

Pierre Azoulay

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Joshua Graff Zivin

School of Global Policy and Strategy; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Bhaven N. Sampat

Columbia University - Mailman School of Public Health; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: January 2011

Abstract

Are scientific knowledge flows embodied in individuals, or "in the air"? To answer this question, we measure the effect of labor mobility in a sample of 9,483 elite academic life scientists on the citation trajectories associated with individual articles (resp. patents) published (resp. granted) before the scientist moved to a new institution. We find that article-to-article citations from the scientific community at the superstar's origin location are barely affected by their departure. In contrast, article-to-patent citations, and especially patent-to-patent citations, decline at the origin location following a star's departure, suggesting that spillovers from academia to industry are not completely disembodied. We also find that article-to-article citations at the superstar's destination location markedly increase after they move. Our results suggest that, to be realized, knowledge flows to industry may require more face-to-face interaction than those to academics. Moreover, to the extent that academic scientists do not internalize the effect of their location decisions on the circulation of ideas, our results raise the intriguing possibility that barriers to labor mobility in academic science limit the recombination of individual bits of knowledge, resulting in a suboptimal rate of scientific exploration.

Suggested Citation

Azoulay, Pierre and Graff Zivin, Joshua and Sampat, Bhaven N., The Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge Across Time and Space: Evidence from Professional Transitions for the Superstars of Medicine (January 2011). NBER Working Paper No. w16683, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1740312

Pierre Azoulay (Contact Author)

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Joshua Graff Zivin

School of Global Policy and Strategy ( email )

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Bhaven N. Sampat

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