How Do the Foreign-born Perform in Inventive Activity? Evidence from Sweden

Yannu Zheng () and Olof Ejermo

No 2015/9, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: Using a new database that matches patent applications by Swedish residents with demographic information from 1985 to 2007, we examine differences in inventive performance by individuals of foreign and domestic origins, in terms of quantity (probability of patenting, total number of patents per inventor) and quality (forward citations, probability of grant) of patents. We further compare adult and child immigrants with their Swedish-born counterparts. Holding other variables constant, we find that the immigrants are generally less likely to patent than the Swedish-born. Nonetheless, the general group of immigrant inventors, including those who migrated as adults, perform as well as the native inventors and therefore seem more positively selected. Compared with the Swedish-born, the immigrants who migrated as children are disadvantaged in both quantity and quality of patents, which may be linked to a lack of Sweden-specific human capital. Whether education was received in Sweden does not seem to make a difference for the immigrants who migrated as adults. In summary, this study provides an initial impression of the inventive performance, contribution, and challenges of distinct groups of immigrants who have differing characteristics and backgrounds.

Keywords: immigrants; inventors; children; adults (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 N30 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2015-02-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wp.circle.lu.se/upload/CIRCLE/workingpapers/201509_Zheng_Ejermo.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How do the foreign-born perform in inventive activity? Evidence from Sweden (2015)
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:hhs:lucirc:2015_009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Torben Schubert ().