How access to knowledge has shaped innovation: the case of ARPANET

December 1969

We investigate empirically how connectivity aects innovation. We study the case

of ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet. ARPANET was an academic

research project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the

US military. This revolutionary technology decreased the cost of connectivity by providing for the first time ever electronic mails and data sharing to scientists. Thanks to its unique features and given the fact that there were no other networks at that time, we quantify the causal effect of accessing the network on the publication rates of institutions using a difference-in-difference strategy. Preliminary results show that following the access to ARPANET connected institutions experienced an increase of 11 publications per year. To explore the underlying mechanism behind the productivity increase, we examine the patterns of collaborations and citations. We find that additional collaborations account for only one tenth of the total increase in productivity and collaborations between connected universities did not span a longer distance. The citations indicate that average age of references contained in the publications significantly decreased, but only for references to the works of other connected institutions.

December 1970

July 1977

August 1982