German-Jewish Emigres and U.S. Invention / Petra Moser, Alessandra Voena, Fabian Waldinger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moser, Petra.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Voena, Alessandra.

Waldinger, Fabian.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w19962.

NBER working paper series no. w19962

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

Historical accounts suggest that Jewish émigrés from Nazi Germany revolutionized U.S. science. To analyze the émigrés' effects on chemical innovation in the U.S. we compare changes in patenting by U.S. inventors in research fields of émigrés with fields of other German chemists. Patenting by U.S. inventors increased by 31 percent in émigré fields. Regressions that instrument for émigré fields with pre-1933 fields of dismissed German chemists confirm a substantial increase in U.S. invention. Inventor-level data indicate that émigrés encouraged innovation by attracting new researchers to their fields, rather than by increasing the productivity of incumbent inventors.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2014.