Immigration, Innovation, and Growth

Konrad Burchardi (), Thomas Chaney, Tarek Hassan, Lisa Tarquinio and Stephen Terry

No 27075, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We show a causal impact of immigration on innovation and growth in US counties. To identify the causal impact of immigration, we use 130 years of detailed data on migrations from foreign countries to US counties to isolate quasi-random variation in the ancestry composition of US counties; interacting this plausibly exogenous variation in ancestry composition with the recent inflows of migrants from different origins, we predict the total number of migrants flowing into each US county in recent decades. We show immigration has a positive causal impact on innovation, measured as patenting of local firms, and on economic growth, measured as real income growth for native workers. We interpret those results through the lens of a quantitative model of endogenous growth and migrations. A structural estimation of this model targeting the well identified causal impact of migration on innovation suggests the large inflow of foreign migrants into the US since 1965 may have contributed to an additional 8% growth in innovation and 5% growth in wages.

JEL-codes: J61 O31 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-int, nep-tid and nep-ure
Note: DAE EFG IFM POL PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27075.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Immigration, Innovation, and Growth (2022)
Working Paper: Immigration, Innovation, and Growth (2022)
Working Paper: Immigration, Innovation, and Growth (2020)
Working Paper: Immigration, Innovation, and Growth (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27075

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27075

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().