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Immigration & Ideas: What Did Russian Scientists 'Bring' to the US?

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  • Ganguli, Ina

    (Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics)

Abstract

This paper examines how high-skilled immigrants contribute to knowledge diffusion using a rich dataset of Russian scientists and US citations to Soviet-era publications. Analysis of a panel of US cities and scientific fields shows that citations to Soviet-era work increased significantly with the arrival of immigrants. A difference-in-differences analysis with matched paper-pairs also shows that after Russian scientists moved to the US, citations to their Soviet-era papers increased relative to control papers. Both strategies reveal scientific field-specific effects. Ideas in high-impact papers and papers previously accessible to US scientists were the most likely to "spill over" to natives.

Suggested Citation

  • Ganguli, Ina, 2014. "Immigration & Ideas: What Did Russian Scientists 'Bring' to the US?," SITE Working Paper Series 30, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hasite:0030
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    Cited by:

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    2. Mohammadi, Ali & Broström, Anders & Franzoni, Chiara, 2015. "Work Force Composition and Innovation: How Diversity in Employees’ Ethnical and Disciplinary Backgrounds Facilitates Knowledge Re-combination," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 413, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    3. Mawussé K. N. Okey, 2017. "Does migration promote industrial development in Africa?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(1), pages 228-247.
    4. Das, Gouranga Gopal & Marjit, Sugata & Kar, Mausumi, 2020. "The Impact of Immigration on Skills, Innovation and Wages: Education Matters more than where People Come from," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 557-582.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    high skill immigration; citations; innovation; Russia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - General
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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