Labor mobility of scientists, technological diffusion, and the firm's patenting decision
构建并检验了一个模型，说明创新企业中的科学家员工有时会离职加入或创办竞争对手，这促使企业更倾向于申请专利来保护自身，同时减少研发支出。企业层面的面板数据支持这一结论，表明科学家流动与行业间专利差异及整体专利增长有关。
We develop and test a model of the patenting and R&D decisions of an innovating firm whose scientist-employees sometimes quit to join or start a rival. In our model, the innovating firm patents to protect itself from its employees. We show theoretically that the risk of a scientist's departure reduces the firm's R&D expenditures and raises its propensity to patent an innovation. We find evidence from firm-level panel data that is consistent with this latter result. Our results suggest that scientists' turnover is associated with cross-industry patenting variation and with recent economy-wide increases in patenting. Scientists' turnover may also partly account for why small firms have high patent-R&D ratios.