Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/215390 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12994
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We investigate the relationship between the presence of migrant inventors and the dynamics of innovation in the migrants' receiving countries. We find that countries are 25 to 60 percent more likely to gain advantage in patenting in certain technologies given a twofold increase in the number of foreign inventors from other nations that specialize in those same technologies. For the average country in our sample, this number corresponds to only 25 inventors and a standard deviation of 135. We deal with endogeneity concerns by using historical migration networks to instrument for stocks of migrant inventors. Our results generalize the evidence of previous studies that show how migrant inventors "import" knowledge from their home countries, which translates into higher patenting in the receiving countries. We interpret these results as tangible evidence of migrants facilitating the technology-specific diffusion of knowledge across nations.
Subjects: 
knowledge
technology
patent
migration
innovation
JEL: 
O31
O33
F22
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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