Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229464 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8646
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Does access to information and communication technologies (ICT) increase innovation? We examine this question by exploiting the staggered adoption of BITNET across U.S. universities in the 1980s. BITNET, an early version of the Internet, enabled e-mail-based knowledge exchange and collaboration among academics. After the adoption of BITNET, university-connected inventors increase patenting substantially. The effects are driven by collaborative patents by new inventor teams. The patents induced by ICT are exclusively science-related and stem from fields where knowledge can be codified easily. In contrast, we neither find an effect on patents not building on science nor on inventors unconnected to universities.
Subjects: 
ICT
communication
knowledge diffusion
science-based innovation
university-patenting
JEL: 
H54
L23
L86
O30
O32
O33
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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