Migration and Local Innovation: Evidence from Fine-Grained Data from OECD Countries

Gabriel Chaves Bosch () and Cem Ozguzel
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Gabriel Chaves Bosch: Queen Mary University of London

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: Does the presence of migrants influence innovation at the local level? This paper answers this question using novel data containing fine-grained information on the migrant population and geo-coded data on patent locations for a large set of 19 OECD countries over the 1990-2014 period. We find that a one percentage point increase in the local migrant share increases patent applications by 2.5%. This effect is driven by more urbanised and economically developed localities, where innovation levels are already higher to begin with. However, this impact becomes insignificant when aggregating observations at larger geographical levels, suggesting that the effect of migration on innovation is concentrated in space and features high rates of spatial decay

Keywords: Migration; Innovation; Patents; OECD countries; local (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 O31 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2025-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:25021

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