Job-Hopping in Silicon Valley: Some Evidence Concerning the Microfoundations of a High-Technology Cluster

By Bruce C. Fallick, Charles A. Fleischman, James B. Rebitzer. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2005

506 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Observers of Silicon Valley's computer cluster report that employees move rapidly between competing firms, but evidence supporting this claim is scarce. Job-hopping is important in computer clusters because it facilitates the reallocation of talent and resources toward firms with superior innovations. Using new data on labor mobility, we find higher rates of job-hopping for college-educated men in Silicon Valley's computer industry than in computer clusters located out of the state. Mobility rates in other California computer clusters are similar to Silicon Valley's, suggesting some role for features of California law that make noncompete agreements unenforceable. Consistent with our model of innovation, mobility rates outside computer industries are no higher in California than elsewhere.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b6e61e65043ff4c1b89b7deb32269c49640b68d9

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Citations in the corpus

Entrepreneurship as Experimentation (2014, unknown): “In this sense, the flexibility of labor markets governs the types of projects that entrepreneurs can undertake (Fallick, Fleischman, and Rebitzer 2006).”
The mechanisms of agglomeration: Evidence from the effect of inter-industry relations on the location of new firms (2011, background): “Fallick et al (2006) show that workers’ mobility between firms is higher in specialized areas.”
Does the Mobility of R&D Labor Increase Innovation? (2015, background): “Consistent with this view, subsequent studies document the co-existence of high labor turnover and localized knowledge sharing among firms in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley (Almeida and Kogut, 1999; Breschi and Lissoni, 2005; Fallick et al., 2006).”
How does labour mobility affect the performance of plants? The importance of relatedness and geographical proximity (2008, background): “These benefits of labour pooling are often believed to exceed the downsides of labour mobility (i.e. labour poaching) that reduce the incentive of firms to invest in their own employees (Kim and Marschke, 2005; Combes and Duranton, 2006; Fallick et al., 2006).”
Skills in the city (2009, background): “Skills also influence the matching of workers to jobs (e.g., Andersson et al., 2007) and turnover (e.g., Fallick et al., 2006). jobs.”
Reputations for toughness in patent enforcement: implications for knowledge spillovers via inventor mobility (2009, unknown): “…technology firms based in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in California simultaneously face rapid absorption by other firms of information and know-how pertaining to inventions and unusually high turnover among skilled employees (Almeida and Kogut, 1999; Kim and Marschke, 2005; Fallick et al., 2006).”
Is Pay for Performance Detrimental to Innovation? (2009, unknown): “83.”
Agglomeration and productivity: evidence from firm-level data (2011, background): “Moreover, flows of labor and technical personnel between firms tend to be greater in dense locations, stimulating the diffusion of competencies and knowledge embodied in people (Almeida and Kogut 1999; Moen 2005; Fallick et al. 2006 ).”
Labour Market Externalities and Regional Growth in Sweden: The Importance of Labour Mobility between Skill-Related Industries (2014, background): “A high intensity of job-hopping may form a threat for firms to lose their key personnel to competitors, and it may lower the incentive for firms to train and upgrade the skills of their employees (KIM and MARSCHKE, 2005; COMBES and DURANTON, 2006; FALLICK et al., 2006).”
Ecological Footprint Policy? Land Use as an Environmental Indicator (2014, background): “This economic process is known as the “Silicon Valley” effect (Fallick et al. 2006) and it is what lies behind the older concept of Smith-Marshallian externalities.”
How Anticipated Employee Mobility Affects Acquisition Likelihood: Evidence from a Natural Experiment (2015, methodology): “employee mobility (Fallick et al., 2006; Garmaise, 2011; Marx et al., 2009) and because strategic factor market theory argues that firms make acquisition decisions based on expectations about the value of a resource (Barney, 1986), our results suggest that decreases in anticipated employee mobility ”
Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs: A Review of Recent Literature (2018, unknown): “…can lead to lasting cultures that favor or hinder entrepreneurship.18F19 These lasting legacies potentially impact industrial organization (e.g., Fallick et al., 2006; Audretsch and Feldman, 2012; Carlino and Kerr, 2015), and are reflected in the higher degree to which entrepreneurs operate in…”
Agglomeration and Innovation (2014, background): “Fallick et al. (2006) find much greater mobility of college-educated males employed in the computer industry in Silicon Valley compared with the interfirm mobility of similarly educated workers in the computer industry in other areas outside of California.”
Workplace Peers and Entrepreneurship (2010, unknown): “One potential concern with our models is that the measure of entrepreneurial peers captures generic informational effects of interfirm mobility—that may also be associated with information spillovers that influence entrepreneurship (Saxenian 1994, Fallick et al. 2006).”
Brain drain or brain bank? The impact of skilled emigration on poor-country innovation (2008, background): “support knowledge exchange and productivity (see Fallick et al. (2006) and Freedman (2008) for recent applications).”