Do Native STEM Graduates Increase Innovation? Evidence from U.S. Metropolitan Areas

John Winters

No 1714, Economics Working Paper Series from Oklahoma State University, Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Business

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of college graduates educated in STEM fields on patenting intensity in U.S. metropolitan areas. Some prior research suggests a positive effect on urban innovation from foreign-born STEM workers, but little is known about the effects of native STEM graduates on innovation. My preferred results use time-differenced 2SLS regressions, and I introduce a novel approach to instrumenting for the growth in native STEM graduates. I find positive effects of foreign STEM on innovation, roughly consistent with previous literature. However, my preferred approach yields a negative coefficient estimate for native STEM graduates on innovation that is not statistically significant but suggests that a meaningfully large positive effect is unlikely during the 2009-2015 time-period. I discuss possible explanations and implications.

Keywords: STEM; innovation; patents; human capital; higher education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 J24 J61 O31 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-lab, nep-tid and nep-ure
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