We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new foreign region for innovative...

William Kerr’s analysis looked at how knowledge is transferred across countries through ethnic research communities. He finds that the ethnic composition of inventors in a company affects where a firm decides to invest. The idea is that if a company has a core set of researchers from a...