Brain-Circulation Network: The Global Mobility of the Life Scientists

Luca Verginer and Massimo Riccaboni (massimo.riccaboni@imtlucca.it)

No 10/2018, Working Papers from IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Abstract: Global mobility and migration of scientists is an important modern phenomenon with economic and political implications. As scientists become ever more footloose it is important to identify general patterns and regularities at a global scale. At the same time cities, and especially global cities, have become impor- tant loci of economic and scientific activity. Limiting research to international migration, would disregard the importance of local innovation systems. The analysis of the mobility and brain circulation patterns at global scale remains challenging, due to difficulties in obtaining individual level mobility data. In this work we propose a methodology to trace intercity and international mobility through bibliographic records. We reconstruct the intercity and international mobility network of 3.7 Million Life Scientists moving between 9,745 cities. We present several features of the extracted network, offer evidence that the international innovation system is marked by national borders and linguistic similarity and show that international mo- bility largely contributes to the scientific output of national research systems. Moreover we find evidence to suggest that global cities attract highly productive scientist early in their careers.

Keywords: Network Analysis; Scientist Mobility; Brain Circulation; Global Cities; National Innovation Systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 F66 J61 L65 O15 O18 O30 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2018-10, Revised 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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Published in EIC working paper series

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http://eprints.imtlucca.it/4072/1/EIC_WP_4_2018.pdf First version, 2018

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ial:wpaper:4/2018

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