Immigrant inventors and diversity in the age of mass migration

Francesco Campo, Mariapia Mendola, Andrea Morrison and Gianmarco Ottaviano

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: A possible unintended but damaging consequence of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the policies it inspires, is that they may put high-skilled immigrants off more than low-skilled ones at times when countries and businesses intensify their competition for global talent. We investigate this argument following the location choices of thousands of immigrant inventors across US counties during the Age of Mass Migration. To do so we combine a unique USPTO historical patent dataset with Census data and exploit exogenous variation in both immigration flows and diversity induced by former settlements, WWI and the 1920s Immigration Acts. We find that co-ethnic networks play an important role in attracting immigrant inventors. However, we also find that immigrant diversity acts as an additional significant pull factor. This is mainly due to externalities that foster immigrant inventors’ innovativeness. These findings are relevant for todays advanced economies that have become major receivers of migrant flows and, in a long-term perspective, have started thinking about immigration in terms of not only level but also composition.

Keywords: international migration; cultural diversity; innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/108464/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Immigrant inventors and diversity in the age of mass migration (2020)
Working Paper: Immigrant Inventors and Diversity in the Age of Mass Migration (2020)
Working Paper: Immigrant Inventors and Diversity in the Age of Mass Migration (2020)
Working Paper: Immigrant Inventors and Diversity in the Age of Mass Migration (2020)
Working Paper: Immigrant Inventors and Diversity in the Age of Mass Migration
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:ehl:lserod:108464

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().