Culture and diversity in knowledge creation
- Creators
- Berliant, Marcus
- Fujita, Masahisa
Abstract
Is the paradise of effortless communication the ideal environment for knowledge creation? Or, can the development of local culture in regions raise knowledge productivity compared to a single region with a unitary culture? In other words, can a real technological increase in the cost of collaboration and the cost of public knowledge flow between regions, resulting in cultural differentiation between regions, increase welfare? In our framework, a culture is a set of ideas held exclusively by residents of a location. In general in our model, the equilibrium path generates separate cultures in different regions. When we compare this to the situation where all workers are resident in one region, R&D workers become too homogeneous and there is only one culture. As a result, equilibrium productivity in the creation of new knowledge is lower relative to the situation when there are multiple cultures and workers are more diverse.
Additional Information
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. Received 2 December 2011; Received in revised form 28 February 2012; Accepted 29 February 2012; Available online 7 March 2012.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 34495
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2012.02.008
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20120927-093622178
- Created
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2012-09-27Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field