Abstract
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.
Lingua originale | English |
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Numero di pagine | 25 |
Stato di pubblicazione | Pubblicato - 2016 |
Keywords
- R&D
- business visits
- knowledge
- labour mobility
- productivity