How Do Travel Costs Shape Collaboration?

Christian Catalini,Christian Fons-Rosen,Patrick Gaulé

doi:10.1287/mnsc.2019.3381

Abstract

We develop a simple theoretical framework for thinking about how geographic frictions, and in particular travel costs, shape scientists’ collaboration decisions and the types of projects that are developed locally versus over distance. We then take advantage of a quasi-experiment—the introduction of new routes by a low-cost airline—to test the predictions of the theory. Results show that travel costs constitute an important friction to collaboration: after a low-cost airline enters, the number of collaborations increases between 0.3 and 1.1 times, a result that is robust to multiple falsification tests and causal in nature. The reduction in geographic frictions is particularly beneficial for high-quality scientists that are otherwise embedded in worse local environments. Consistent with the theory, lower travel costs also endogenously change the types of projects scientists engage in at different levels of distance. After the shock, we observe an increase in higher-quality and novel projects, as well as projects that take advantage of complementary knowledge and skills between subfields, and that rely on specialized equipment. We test the generalizability of our findings from chemistry to a broader data set of scientific publications and to a different field where specialized equipment is less likely to be relevant, mathematics. Last, we discuss implications for the formation of collaborative research and development teams over distance. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Highlights

The drastic reduction in communication costs brought by the diffusion of the internet initially led to claims about a future in which technology could overcome geographic frictions and facilitate the rapid exchange of ideas, goods, and services independent of distance (Cairncross 1997, Friedman 2005)
Whereas previous work has mostly focused on communication costs and their impact on the rate of collaboration, our paper emphasizes other effects distance-related frictions can have on innovative outcomes, including the type of projects that are pursued with local versus distant teams
Whereas both Gaspar and Glaeser (1998) and Kim et al (2009) have suggested that the secular decline in air travel costs might have led to an increase in scientific collaborations, they do not take their prediction to the data, making this the first study to do so to our knowledge

Summary

Introduction

The drastic reduction in communication costs brought by the diffusion of the internet initially led to claims about a future in which technology could overcome geographic frictions and facilitate the rapid exchange of ideas, goods, and services independent of distance (Cairncross 1997, Friedman 2005). Firms, communities of experts and teams invest substantial amounts of time, effort and resources to ensure that the right individuals can be colocated—even if only temporarily—to discuss ideas, make progress on projects, and develop the relationships that can later support more effective interactions over distance. Such temporary forms of colocation have been shown to foster both idea diffusion and the formation of new collaborations (Chai and Freeman 2018).

Objectives

Results

Conclusion