%0 Report
        %A Piva, Mariacristina
%A Tani, Massimiliano
%A Vivarelli, Marco
        %T Business Visits, Knowledge Diffusion and Productivity
        %D 2016
        %8 2016 Dec
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 10421
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp10421
        %X 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.
        %K business visits
%K labour mobility
%K knowledge
%K R&D
%K productivity