aeaweb.org
The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States
(Forthcoming Article) - We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation.
Leveraging new data, we use age of SSN assignment to identify immigrant
status. Immigrants represent 16 percent of inventors, but
authored 23 percent of patents. Immigrant inventors contribute to
knowledge diffusion across borders. They disproportionately rely
on foreign technologies and inventor collaborations. Using variation
from premature inventor deaths, we find immigrant inventors
create stronger innovation productivity spillovers on their collaborators,
as compared to US-born inventors. A simple model implies
immigrants are responsible for 32 percent of aggregate innovation,
over half of which is due to human capital externalities on US-born
collaborators.
