IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nod/wpaper/019.html

Cognitive Mobility - Labor Market Responses to Supply Shocks in the Space of Ideas

Author

Listed:
  • Kirk B. Doran

    (Department of Economics, University of Notre Dame)

  • George J. Borjas

    (Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University)

Abstract

Knowledge producers who are conducting research on a particular set of questions may respond to supply and demand shocks by shifting their resources to a different set of questions. Cognitive mobility measures the transition from one locations in an idea space to another location in that space. This paper examines the cognitive mobility flows unleashed by the influx of a large number of Soviet mathematicians into the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Our analysis exploits the fact that the influx of Soviet mathematicians into the American mathematics community was larger in some fields than in others. The data reveal substantial cognitive mobility in response to the influx, with American mathematicians moving away from, rather than moving to, fields that likely received large numbers of Soviet emigres. It appears that diminishing returns in specific research areas, rather than beneficial human capital spillovers, dominated the cognitive mobility decisions of pre-existing knowledge producers.

Suggested Citation

  • Kirk B. Doran & George J. Borjas, 2012. "Cognitive Mobility - Labor Market Responses to Supply Shocks in the Space of Ideas," Working Papers 019, University of Notre Dame, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:nod:wpaper:019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www3.nd.edu/~tjohns20/RePEc/deendus/wpaper/019_cognitive.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nod:wpaper:019. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Terence Johnson The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Terence Johnson to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deendus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.