TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Piva, Mariacristina
AU  - Tani, Massimiliano
AU  - Vivarelli, Marco
        TI  - Business Visits, Knowledge Diffusion and Productivity
        PY  - 2016/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10421
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp10421
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - business visits
KW  - labour mobility
KW  - knowledge
KW  - R&D
KW  - productivity
        ER  -