Research

Workers have strengths and weaknesses and seek assistance from colleagues when facing challenges in their tasks. To understand how they optimize socialization in their workplace, I develop a tractable model of endogenous network formation among co-workers. Workers aim to
complete their tasks but may encounter barriers, and when they do, they may reach out to one of their friends for help. Therefore, workers face the tradeoff between the potential rewards of task completion, the costs of forming links, and the stigma associated with seeking help. I show that the extent to which workers invest in social networks is sensitive to the probability of facing struggles to perform a task alone. When the rate at which they face challenges are very low or very high, social networks offer limited value to workers, and therefore investment in connections is low. Intermediate rates, on the other hand, promote collaboration and, therefore, link formation. Furthermore, I show that excessive investment in social networks may occur because workers fail to recognize that their actions can impede other workers’ access to assistance. They only see their own benefits, which they associate with having many links. I also explore approaches that can mitigate the over- or under-investment when it emerges, for example, whether remote work mitigates the inefficiency.

I explore the extent to which mergers and acquisitions (M&A’s) facilitate knowledge spillovers across previously disconnected inventors. To address the issue, I construct a novel dataset that combines information about inventors, their patenting activities, online professional profiles, and details about M&A’s. Using a matching design, I study inventors’ productivity in both the acquiring and acquired firms following an acquisition. Additionally, I conduct a heterogeneity analysis to pinpoint the underlying mechanisms driving these effects. I also characterize features of firms that foster collaboration and information exchange among inventors within both the acquiring and acquired companies, relative to less successful mergers with only weak effects on innovation. The results relate to the ongoing discussion concerning “killer acquisitions” and their implications for innovation in acquired firms and highlight the importance of knowledge spillovers across innovators of merging firms.