Isolating Personal Knowledge Spillovers: Coinventor Deaths and Spatial Citation Differentials

We propose a new method to estimate and isolate the localization of knowledge spillovers due physical presence person, using after-application but pre-grant deaths differently located coinventors same patent. The approach estimates differences in local citations between deceased still-living inventors at increasingly distant radii. Patents receive 26 percent fewer from within radius 20 miles around deceased, relative coinventors. Differences attenuate with time distance, are stronger when live farther hold for subsample possibly premature deaths. (JEL O31, O33, O34, R32)