Innovation on Wings: Nonstop Flights and Firm Innovation in the Global Context
研究全球范围内直飞航班如何促进企业创新，发现两地间直飞航班增加10%可带来3.4%的专利引用增长和1.4%的合作专利增长，且对创新规模大、位于创新中心或文化距离大的企业效果更显著。
We study whether, when, and how better connectivity through nonstop flights leads to positive innovation outcomes for firms in the global context. Using unique data of all flights emanating from 5,015 airports around the globe from 2005 to 2015 and exploiting a regression discontinuity framework, we report that a 10% increase in nonstop flights between two locations leads to a 3.4% increase in citations and a 1.4% increase in the production of collaborative patents between those locations. This effect is driven primarily by firms as opposed to academic institutions. We further study the characteristics of firms and firm locations that are salient to the relation between nonstop flights and innovation outcomes across countries. Using a gravity model, we posit and find that the positive effect of nonstop flights on innovation is stronger for firms and subsidiaries with greater innovation mass (e.g., stocks of inventors and R&D spending), located in innovation hubs or countries that are deemed technology leaders, and that are separated by large cultural or temporal distance. This paper was accepted by Alfonso Gambardella, business strategy. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4682 .