The CDM framework: knowledge recombination from an evolutionary viewpoint

Since Crepon, Duguet, and Mairesse published their ground-breaking article ('Research, Innovation and Productivity: An Econometric Analysis at the Firm Level', 1998), the CDM framework has known a large diffusion, despite being published in a non-indexed journal. The present study is an exploration of the spread and recombination of 'knowledge' in the 'CDM universe', comprising all papers in Scopus indexed journals citing CDM or/and CDM cited papers. We assess first the speed and range of diffusion of CDM and investigate next the 'origins' and further 'genealogical' make up of the knowledge recombinations within the CDM universe. We find that CDM is cited by a growing number of papers, which spread over a variety of fields, and that it compares very well with the most cited comparable articles in indexed journals in its domain of research. We further find that the CDM universe is mainly constituted of three large clusters and for each of them we are able to identify knowledge paths going from the CDM and earlier cited papers to the subsequent main citing papers. We intend to provide a detailed interpretation of these findings in future work.