Innovation in diversified cities: Evidence from Canada’s urban areas

Manassé Drabo and Horatio M. Morgan

Economic and Social Reports from Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies and Modelling Branch

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of cultural and industrial diversity on innovation across 152 Canadian urban areas from 2001 to 2021. By applying a knowledge spillover lens, it associates such diversity with enhanced knowledge variety and diffusion. Using inventor counts and Shannon indices as proxies for innovation and diversity, the authors show that cultural and industrial diversity fosters innovation. An increase of one standard deviation in cultural diversity raises innovation by 13.4% to 81.7%, while the same increase in industrial diversity raises it by 6.6% to 36.6%. Their interaction synergistically yields an additional 2.2% to 12.4% increase in innovation. Meanwhile, recent immigration diversity amplifies these effects, validating the knowledge mechanisms and highlighting significant theoretical and policy implications.

Keywords: cultural diversity; immigration; industrial structure; innovation; knowledge spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 M21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11-26
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2025011/article/00003-eng.htm (text/html)
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2025011/article/00003-eng.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:stc:stcp8e:20250110003e

DOI: 10.25318/36280001202501100003-eng

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic and Social Reports from Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies and Modelling Branch Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Brown ().