IDE Seminar - October 9 - Daniel Rock

Abstract: Engineers, as implementers of technology, are highly complementary to the intangible knowledge assets that firms accumulate. This paper seeks to address whether technical talent is a source of rents for corporate employers, both in general and in the specific case of the surprising open-source launch of TensorFlow, a deep learning software package, by Google. Using over 180 million position records and over 52 million skill records from LinkedIn, I build a panel of firm-level investment in technological human capital (information technology, research, and engineering talent quantities). I find that on average, an additional engineer at a firm is correlated with approximately $854,000 more market value. The second part of the talk covers the launch of TensorFlow, an open-source machine learning package created by Google, and its effect on the market value of firms with AI Talent.