Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity

C. Fritz Foley () and William Kerr
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C. Fritz Foley: Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts 02163; and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Management Science, 2013, vol. 59, issue 7, 1529-1544

Abstract: This paper studies the impact that ethnic innovators have on the global activities of U.S. firms by analyzing detailed data on patent applications and on the operations of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The results indicate that increases in the share of a firm's innovation performed by inventors of a particular ethnicity are associated with increases in the share of that firm's affiliate activity in countries related to that ethnicity. Ethnic innovators also appear to facilitate the disintegration of innovative activity across borders and to allow U.S. multinationals to form new affiliates abroad without the support of local joint venture partners. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.

Keywords: foreign direct investment; technology transfer; patents; innovation; research and development; ethnic networks; diasporas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (71)

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1120.1684 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:59:y:2013:i:7:p:1529-1544

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