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Elias Bruegmann
Papers
- Pharmaceutical Mergers and Innovation (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: This paper uses large pharmaceutical mergers to understand the importance of inventor networks for research productivity. If networking is easier within firms and networks matter for innovation, mergers should result in changes in network size and research productivity. I investigate this hypothesis by looking at the effect of mergers on invention in different technologies at merging firms. Following a merger, the productivity of inventors at the target (or acquirer) should increase more in technologies in which the acquirer (or target) has a larger network. Using patent data, I construct measures of the stock of research before the merger at each pre-merger firm relevant to different technologies. I show that the stock of relevant pre-merger research at one firm is predictive of post-merger changes in collaboration and cross citation for inventors in that technology at the other firm. I demonstrate that patents per inventor and citations per patent increase more for inventors who experience greater increases in the collaboration and learning opportunities available to them within their firm. These results suggest the importance of the firm in shaping research spillovers and a possible benefit from mergers.
- Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers (with C. Kirabo Jackson)
Work In Progress
Abstract: Learning from one's co-workers is a potentially important aspect of on-the-job learning. While such spillovers are of great interest to economists, they have been very difficult to document empirically. We use extensive data on student test results and teachers in elementary schools from North Carolina to empirically study these spillovers. We look at the effect of changes in the composition of a teacher’s peers on her students’ test score gains. In our first approach, we use characteristics of the teacher’s peers like their experience and licensing exam test scores to measure changes in peer quality. In our second approach, we use the new peers’ performances at previous schools to indicate quality. We show that introducing a higher quality teacher has a more positive effect on the performance of the other teachers in the grade than introducing a lower quality teacher. Understanding the size of spillovers between teachers will aid researchers and policy makers in understanding the importance of good teachers and could have strong implications for the effects on student achievement of mixing teachers of different ability levels and backgrounds.
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