Same difference? Minority ethnic inventors, diversity and innovation in the UK

Max Nathan

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

Abstract: Minority ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation, especially in high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley. Do ‘ethnicity–innovation’ channels exist elsewhere? Ethnicity could influence innovation via production complementarities from diverse inventor communities, co-ethnic network externalities or individual ‘stars’. I explore these issues using new UK patents microdata and a novel name-classification system. UK minority ethnic inventors are spatially concentrated, as in the USA, but have different characteristics reflecting UK-specific geography and history. I find that the diversity of inventor communities helps raise individual patenting, with suggestive influence of East Asian-origin stars. Majority inventors may benefit from multiplier effects.

Keywords: innovation; cultural diversity; minority ethnic inventors patents; cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 O31 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-sbm and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Published in Journal of Economic Geography, 2015, 15(1), pp. 129-168. ISSN: 1468-2702

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Journal Article: Same difference? Minority ethnic inventors, diversity and innovation in the UK (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:57946

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