Immigration and Innovation: Chinese Graduate Students in U.S. Universities

Patrick Gaulé and Mario Piacentini

CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague

Abstract: Immigration is rapidly changing the composition of the R&D workforce in the United States. We study here Chinese chemists and chemical engineers who migrate to the United States for their graduate studies. We analyze productivity at the individual researcher level, thus bypassing the identification issues that earlier studies had to confront when analyzing the relationship between immigration and innovation at the university or firm level. Using new data and measurement techniques, we find robust evidence that Chinese students make disproportionate contributions to the scientific output of their advisors and departments. We attribute this result to a selection effect as it is relatively more difficult for Chinese students to gain admission to U.S. PhD programs. Our results strengthen the case for liberal student migration policies.

Keywords: high-skilled migration; students; universities; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I23 J61 O15 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-ino, nep-mig and nep-tid
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