Increasing Canada's International Competitiveness: Is There a Link between Skilled Immigrants and Innovation?

Jamie Partridge and William Hartley Furtan

No 6504, 2008 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2008, Orlando, Florida from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association)

Abstract: We use an augmented national ideas production function to examine skilled immigrants' impact on Canadian innovation at the provincial level. Empirically, this model was tested using Canadian data by province on innovation flow over an 11 year time period, where innovation flow is defined in terms of international (U.S.) patents. It was found that skilled immigrants, who are proficient in either English or French, have a significant and positive impact on innovation flow in their home province. Further, in examining skilled immigrants by source region, it was found that skilled immigrants from developed countries have the greatest impact on their home province's innovation flow. This is true of North American/European skilled immigrants for all skill-level categories including language proficiency, education, and immigrant class. For immigrants from developing countries, only highly educated Eastern Europeans and Low Income Asians classified as "Independent Workers" are both significant and positively related to their home province's innovation flow.

Keywords: Labor; and; Human; Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-lab and nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea08:6504

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.6504

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