TY  - JOUR
AU  - Agrawal,Ajay K.
AU  - Goldfarb,Avi
TI  - Restructuring Research: Communication Costs and the Democratization of University Innovation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12812
PY  - 2006
Y2  - December 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12812
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12812.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ajay K. Agrawal
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
105 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6
CANADA
Tel: 416/946-0203
Fax: 416/978-5433
E-Mail: ajay.agrawal@rotman.utoronto.ca

Avi Goldfarb
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
105 St George St
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6
E-Mail: agoldfarb@rotman.utoronto.ca
AB  - We report evidence indicating that Bitnet adoption facilitated increased research collaboration between US universities. However, not all institutions benefited equally. Using panel data from seven top engineering journals, Bitnet connection records, and a variety of institution ranking data, we find that medium-ranked universities were the primary beneficiaries; they benefited largely by increasing their collaboration with top-ranked schools. Furthermore, we find that the magnitude of this effect was greatest for co-located pairs. These results suggest that the most salient effect of lowering communication costs may have been to facilitate gains from trade through the specialization of research tasks. Thus, the advent of Bitnet -- and likely subsequent versions, including the Internet -- seems to have increased the role of second-tier universities in the national innovation system as producers of new, high-quality knowledge.
ER  -