How has the Mobility of Inventors been Beneficial for Developing Nations?

This paper will focus on examining the theory that states the mobility of inventors provides a channel for knowledge dissemination within industries. A United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) dataset is exploited on this research in order to examine which are the factors that affect the probability of an inventor moving companies within one to four years in China. Somewhat surprisingly, the only factor that appears to have an effect on the probability of inventors moving to a different company is the patent experience that the employee has. This suggests that the inventors with the most knowledge in the industry are the ones that move about the most. Consequently, this is interpreted as evidence that these workers transmit knowledge that can be easily copied and implemented without much additional R&D effort.