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    Migrant Inventors and the Technological Advantage of Nations
    19 Jun 2019Working Paper Summaries

    Migrant Inventors and the Technological Advantage of Nations

    by Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, and Hillel Rapoport
    This study provides robust econometric evidence for how immigrant inventors shape the innovation dynamics of their receiving countries. Countries receiving inventors from other nations that specialize in patenting particular technologies are more likely to have a significant increase in patent applications of the same technology.
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    Author 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 50% 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 with 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 that translate into higher patenting. We complement our results with micro-evidence showing that migrant inventors are more prevalent in the first bulk of patents of a country in a given technology, as compared to patents filed at later stages. We interpret these results as tangible evidence of migrants facilitating the technology-specific diffusion of knowledge across nations.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: May 2019
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #19-119
    • Faculty Unit(s): Technology and Operations Management
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    Prithwiraj Choudhury
    Prithwiraj Choudhury
    Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration
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