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Three Essays on Human Capital and Innovation in the United States

Dotzel, Kathryn Rose
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3363-8751
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499284768818425

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics.
This research investigates three topics related to human capital and innovation in the United States. The primary objective of the first chapter is to examine the influence of natural amenities on student migration decisions using institution-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. This study surpasses the scope of previous research focused on natural amenities, which rely on a limited selection of state-level measures, by matching interpolated weather station- and county-level climate data to each post-secondary institution. Results suggest that students consider natural amenities in their migration to college decision and, in some cases, preferences for natural amenities vary based on origin state amenity conditions. Nonetheless, migration decisions are dominated by origin state educational opportunities and by proximity of the student's origin state to the state of college attendance. The second chapter separately examines the relationship between knowledge management and innovation in rural and urban businesses in the United States using data from the Economic Research Service's 2014 Rural Establishment Innovation Survey. The focus is on two facets of knowledge management: (1) innovative search strategy, i.e., which sources firms target for information that supports the development of new and improved products and production processes, and (2) the integration of technologies that facilitate data-driven decision-making and the dissemination of knowledge among employees, suppliers, and customers. Existing studies in the knowledge management literature principally examine firms in a single industry, overwhelmingly rely on patent data to proxy for innovation, and cannot account for the innovations of rural establishments in the United States. By addressing these limitations, this research provides novel insights into how rural and urban American businesses acquire and use knowledge to support innovative activity. Results indicate that for businesses located in rural regions, extra-industry sources are most important for successful innovation, while intra-industry sources play a more vital role in the innovation processes of urban businesses, suggesting a major difference in optimal innovative search strategy for firms in rural and urban regions. The purpose of the third chapter is to refine and evaluate the occupation-driven approach to analyzing regional invention suggested by Wojan et al. (2015), who argue that patenting rates should be computed on the subset of workers that might plausibly contribute to patenting. Several modifications are introduced to their original analysis, including use of a special tabulation of more detailed occupation data and added controls for regional characteristics that could confound identification of the inventive class, the group of occupations most associated with patent production. The updated findings are then critically evaluated using a simultaneous equations model of the interrelationship between the composition and productivity of the inventive class. Substitutions of alternative subpopulations of knowledge workers for the inventive class allow for assessment of the value-added of the updated inventive class construct. Results confirm the existence of an interrelationship between patent production and membership in the inventive class in rural regions and highlight an apparent disarticulation of inventive employment and patent-intensive manufacturing employment in urban areas.
Alessandra Faggian (Advisor)
Mark Partridge (Committee Co-Chair)
Joyce Chen (Committee Member)
194 p.
Economics; Higher Education; Regional Studies
human capital; migration; innovation; rural development; amenities

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Citations

  • Dotzel, K. R. (2017). Three Essays on Human Capital and Innovation in the United States [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499284768818425

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Dotzel, Kathryn. Three Essays on Human Capital and Innovation in the United States. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499284768818425.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Dotzel, Kathryn. "Three Essays on Human Capital and Innovation in the United States." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1499284768818425

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1499284768818425
652
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.