How Does Geographical Mobility of Inventors Influence Network Formation?

The goal of this paper is to assess the influence of spatial mobility of knowledge workers on the formation of ties of scientific and industrial collaboration across European regions. Co-location has been traditionally invoked to ease formal collaboration between individuals and firms, since tie formation costs increase with physical distance between partners. In some instances, highly-skilled actors might become mobile and bridge regional networks across separate locations. This paper estimates a fixed effects logit model to ascertain precisely whether there exists a ‘previous co-location premium’ in the formation of networks across European regions.