Research notes
Published papers on trade, finance, migration and knowledge whose replication data sits in a public archive. Each note states the question the authors asked, what they found, and what this platform's own data can add to it — including, where it applies, that it can add nothing.
Can a migrant community move an entire industry's technology across an ocean?
Nina Boberg-Fazlić, Paul Sharp (2023) · American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 15(3)
Boberg-Fazlić and Sharp study nineteenth-century Danish-American settlements and the US dairy industry. Denmark had developed distinctive dairy techniques,...
KnowledgeIf information is free, does it still matter how far away your customer is?
Anders Akerman, Edwin Leuven, Magne Mogstad (2021) · American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 14(1)
Akerman, Leuven and Mogstad use a Norwegian public programme that rolled out broadband access points at different times in different places, giving...
KnowledgeHow much of a country's invention is done by people born somewhere else?
Francesco Lissoni, Ernest Miguélez (2024) · Journal of Economic Perspectives 38(1)
Lissoni and Miguélez review what patent and inventor records reveal about migrants and invention. Linking inventors on patents to their origins shows...
KnowledgeDoes the arrival of migrants make the places they settle more inventive?
Konrad Burchardi et al. (2026) · American Economic Review
Burchardi, Chaney, Hassan, Tarquinio and Terry build an identification strategy from the interaction between quasi-random variation in the ancestry...
KnowledgeDoes patenting a discovery stop other people building on it?
Bhaven Sampat, Heidi L. Williams (2019) · American Economic Review 109(1)
Sampat and Williams compare human gene sequences that were patented against near-identical sequences whose applications failed, using administrative records...
KnowledgeDo the friendships between two places predict how much they trade?
Michael Bailey et al. (2018) · Journal of Economic Perspectives 32(3)
Bailey, Cao, Kuchler, Stroebel and Wong introduce a measure of social connectedness built from aggregated, anonymised Facebook friendship links between...
KnowledgeWhen cheap imports arrive, do domestic firms innovate their way out or give up?
David Autor et al. (2020) · American Economic Review: Insights 2(3)
Matching three decades of US patents to the firms that own them, Autor, Dorn, Hanson, Pisano and Shu find that rising import exposure from China reduced...
KnowledgeIf a government subsidises research, do firms do more of it — or just claim more?
Antoine Dechezleprêtre et al. (2024) · American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 15(4)
Dechezleprêtre, Einiö, Martin and Nguyen exploit a change in the asset-based size thresholds determining eligibility for UK R&D tax relief, giving a...
KnowledgeHow does an idea invented in one country end up producing goods in another?
Ana Maria Santacreu, Jie Cai, Nan Li (2021) · American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 13(4)
Santacreu, Cai and Li model knowledge diffusion across countries and sectors, treating technology as something that spreads unevenly rather than as a...
KnowledgeRich countries spend more on research every year. Why is measured productivity growth falling?
Ian Goldin et al. (2024) · Journal of Economic Literature 62(1)
The review by Goldin, Koutroumpis, Lafond and Winkler documents a slowdown in productivity growth across advanced economies despite rising research inputs,...
KnowledgeDoes forcing a foreign firm to share its technology actually transfer any?
Panle Jia Barwick et al. (2025) · Review of Economic Studies
Barwick, Cao, Li and Bai study China's joint-venture requirement in automobiles, under which foreign carmakers had to partner with domestic firms as the...
KnowledgeWhen shipping technology changes, who does it make rich?
Luigi Pascali (2017) · American Economic Review 107(9)
Pascali uses the transition from sail to steam in the nineteenth century as a natural experiment: steamships made trade routes independent of prevailing...
KnowledgeHow much of what gets patented rests on publicly funded science?
Matt Marx (2019) · Strategic Management Journal
Marx builds a comprehensive linkage between patents and the scientific articles they cite, a mapping that had not existed at scale. The reason it matters is...
Where a note says the data is behind a login, that is openICPSR, which refuses non-browser requests. Those notes rest on the published abstract and on our own observations, never on files we could not open.