The productivity impact of business visits across industries
Mariacristina Piva, Massimiliano Tani & Marco Vivarelli
#2020-011
This paper builds on and considerably extends Piva, Tani and Vivarelli
(2018), confirming the key role of Business Visits as a productivity
enhancing channel of technology transfer. Our analysis is based on a
unique database on business visits sourced from the U.S. National
Business Travel Association, merged with OECD and World Bank data and
resulting in an unbalanced panel covering 33 sectors and 14 countries
over the period 1998-2013 (3,574 longitudinal observations).
We find evidence that BVs contribute to fostering labour productivity in
a significant way. While this is consistent with what found by the
previous (scant) empirical literature on the subject, we also find that
short-term mobility exhibits decreasing returns, being more crucial in
those sectors characterized by less mobility and by lower productivity
performances.
Keywords: Business visits, Labour mobility, Knowledge diffusion, R&D, Productivity
JEL Classification: J61, O33