Regional disadvantage? Employee non-compete agreements and brain drain
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marx-matt.docx
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105.07 KB
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Author(s)
Singh, Jasjit
Fleming, Lee
Marx, Matthew Talin
Date Issued
November 2014
Journal
Research Policy
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Marx, Matt et al. “Regional Disadvantage? Employee Non-Compete Agreements and Brain Drain.” Research Policy 44, 2 (March 2015): 394–404 © 2014 Elsevier B.V.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
A growing body of research has documented the local impact of employee non-compete agreements, but their effect on interstate migration patterns remains unexplored. Exploiting an inadvertent policy reversal in Michigan as a natural experiment, we show that non-compete agreements are responsible for a “brain drain” of knowledge workers out of states that enforce such contracts to states where they are not enforceable. Importantly, this effect is felt most strongly on the margin of workers who are more collaborative and whose work is more impactful. Keywords: Non-compete agreements; Labor mobility; Regional economics
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2014.10.006
