Innovation in Malmo after the oresund Bridge

We analyze the effect of the oresund Bridge, a combined railway and motorway bridge between Swedish Malmo and the Danish capital Copenhagen, on inventive activity in the region of Malmo. Applying difference-in-difference estimation on individual-level data, our findings suggest that the oresund Bridge led to a significant increase in the number of patents per individual in the Malmo region as compared with the two other major regions in Sweden, Gothenburg, and Stockholm. We show that a key mechanism is the attraction of highly qualified workers to the Malmo region following the construction of the bridge.