Star Scientists, Innovation and Regional and National Immigration

Lynne Zucker () and Michael Darby ()

No 13547, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We follow the careers 1981-2004 of 5401 star scientists listed in ISI HighlyCitedSM as most highly cited by their peers. Their number in a US region or a top-25 science and technology (S&T) country significantly increases the probability of firm entry in the S&T field in which they are working. Stars rather than their disembodied discoveries are key for high-tech entry. Stars become more concentrated over time, moving disproportionately from areas with few peers in their discipline to many, except for a countercurrent of some foreign-born American stars returning home. High impact articles and university articles all tend to diffuse. America has 62 percent of the world's stars as residents, primarily because of its research universities which produce them. Migration plays a significant role in some developing countries.

JEL-codes: J61 L26 O14 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-mig and nep-sog
Note: PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (75)

Published as Entrepreneurship and Openness Entrepreneurship and Openness Theory and Evidence Industrial Dynamics , Entrepreneurship and Innovation series. Edited by David B. Audretsch, Robert E. Litan and Robert Strom. Category: Monograph. Book Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing. Published in print: 29 May 2009 ISBN: 9781847207791 eISBN: 9781848449046 DOI: 10.4337/9781848449046 Pages: 232

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13547.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Star Scientists, Innovation and Regional and National Immigration (2009)
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:nbr:nberwo:13547

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13547

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().