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

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: SITE Working Paper ; No. 30

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Particular Labor Markets: General ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
• Subject: high skill immigration ; citations ; innovation ; Russia

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Ganguli, Ina
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE)
• (where): Stockholm
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/204741
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET