Talent is spread equally over the planet, but opportunity is not. Today I want to look at some papers that try to quantify the costs to science and innovation from barriers to immigration. Specifically, let’s look at a set of papers on what happens to individuals with the potential to innovate when they immigrate versus when they do not. (See my post Importing Knowledge for some discussion on the impact of immigration on native scientists and inventors)
This podcast is an audio read through of the (initial version of the) article Innovators Who Immigrate, originally published on New Things Under the Sun.
Articles Mentioned:
Agarwal, Ruchir and Patrick Gaule. 2020. Invisible Geniuses: Could the Knowledge Frontier Advance Faster? American Economic Review: Insights 2(4): 409-24. https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20190457
Agarwal, Ruchir, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule, and Geoff Smith. 2023. Why U.S. immigration matters for the global advancement of science. Research Policy 52(1): 104659. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2022.104659
Gibson, John and David McKenzie. 2014. Scientific mobility and knowledge networks in high emigration countries: Evidence from the Pacific. Research Policy 43(9): 1486-1495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2014.04.005
Kahn, Shulamit, and Megan J. MacGarvie. 2016. How Important is U.S. Location for Research in Science? The Review of Economics and Statistics 98(2): 397-414. https://doi.org/10.1162/REST_a_00490
Shi, Dongbo, Weichen Liu, and Yanbo Wang. 2023. Has China’s Young Thousand Talents Program been successful in recruiting and nurturing top-caliber scientists? Science 379(6627): 62-65. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abq1218
Prato, Marta. 2022. The Global Race for Talent: Brain Drain, Knowledge Transfer, and Growth. Job market paper. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4287268