Business Visits, Knowledge Diffusion and Productivity

Arbeitspapier

The aim of this paper is to investigate the productivity impact of business visits, relative to traditional drivers of productivity enhancement, namely capital formation and R&D. To carry out the analysis, we combine unique and novel data on business visits sourced from the U.S. National Business Travel Association with OECD data on R&D and capital formation. The resulting unbalanced panel covers on average 16 sectors per year in 10 countries during the period 1998-2011 (2,262 observations). Our results suggest that mobility through business visits is an effective mechanism to improve productivity. The estimated effect is about half as large as investing in R&D, supporting viewing business visits as a form of long-term investment rather than pure consumption expenditure. In a nutshell, our outcomes support the need to recognize the private and social value of business mobility.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 10421

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
• Subject: business visits ; labour mobility ; knowledge ; R&D ; productivity

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Piva, Mariacristina ; Tani, Massimiliano ; Vivarelli, Marco
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/161044
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET