American Economic Review Vol. 106 No. 5 2016

Agglomeration of Invention in the Bay Area: Not Just ICT

Chris Forman¹; Avi Goldfarb²; Shane Greenstein³

¹ Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, 800 West Peachtree Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30308 (e-mail: ) · ² Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, 105 St George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3E6, Canada (e-mail: ) · ³ Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Morgan Hall 439, Boston, MA 02138 (e-mail: )

Abstract

We document that the Bay Area rose from 4% of all successful US patent applications in 1976 to 16% in 2008. This is partly driven by the increase in the prevalence of information and communication technology; however, even for patents unrelated to information and communication technology, we see a disproportionate increase in the share of US patents from the Bay Area. We interpret this growth as a trend to coagglomeration in invention across technologies, and explore different dimensions of this trend.

DOI

10.1257/aer.p20161018

Volume

106

Issue

5

Pages

146-151

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

Cite

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