The role of immigrants, emigrants and locals in the historical formation of European knowledge agglomerations

Philipp Koch, Viktor Stojkoski and Cesar Hidalgo

Regional Studies, 2024, vol. 58, issue 9, 1659-1673

Abstract: Did migrants make Paris a mecca for the arts and Vienna a beacon of classical music? Or was their rise a pure consequence of local actors? We use data on more than 22,000 historical individuals born between the years 1000 and 2000 to estimate the contribution of famous immigrants, emigrants and locals to the knowledge specialisations of European regions. We find that the probability that a region develops or keeps specialisation in an activity (based on the birth of famous physicists, painters, etc.) grows with both the presence of immigrants with knowledge about that activity and immigrants with knowledge in related activities. In contrast, we do not find robust evidence that the presence of locals with related knowledge explains entries and/or exits. We address some endogeneity concerns using fixed-effects models considering any location–period–activity-specific factors (e.g., the presence of a new university attracting scientists).

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00343404.2023.2275571 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Role of Immigrants, Emigrants, and Locals in the Historical Formation of European Knowledge Agglomerations (2023)
Working Paper: The role of immigrants, emigrants and locals in the historical formation of European knowledge agglomerations (2023)
Working Paper: The role of immigrants, emigrants and locals in the historical formation of European knowledge agglomerations (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:regstd:v:58:y:2024:i:9:p:1659-1673

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CRES20

DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2023.2275571

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Studies is currently edited by Ivan Turok

More articles in Regional Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().