Immigration and the Rise of American Ingenuity

NBER Working Paper No. 23137

Issued in February 2017, Revised in October 2017

NBER Program(s):Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship



This paper builds on the analysis in Akcigit et al. (2017) by using US patent and Census data to examine macro and micro-level aspects of the relationship between immigration and innovation. We construct a measure of foreign born expertise and show that technology areas where immigrant inventors were prevalent between 1880 and 1940 experienced more patenting and citations between 1940 and 2000. We also show that immigrant inventors were more productive during their life cycle than native born inventors, although they received significantly lower levels of labor income than their native born counterparts. Overall, the contribution of foreign born inventors to US innovation was substantial, but we also find evidence of an immigrant inventor wage-gap that cannot be explained by differentials in productivity.

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Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w23137

Published: Ufuk Akcigit & John Grigsby & Tom Nicholas, 2017. "Immigration and the Rise of American Ingenuity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 327-331, May. citation courtesy of

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