'Another Roof, Another Proof': How Mobility Explains Individual Productivity in Science

Abstract

The mobility of highly skilled employees is seen as a critical way for organizations to transfer knowledge and to improve organizational performance. Yet, the relationship between mobility and individual performance is still largely a theoretical and empirical puzzle. Building both on human capital mobility research and economics of science literature, and exploiting a unique dataset of 348 academics working in biology department in the United Kingdom, we show that mobility has a positive effect on individual productivity. We also find that this positive effect is reinforced when academics move towards better-endowed institutions. We complement our econometrical analysis with more qualitative evidence from a survey.