Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Innovation in the U.S. High-Tech Sector / J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Mee Jung Kim, Kyung Min Lee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, J. David.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Earle, John S.

Kim, Mee Jung.

Lee, Kyung Min.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25565.

NBER working paper series no. w25565

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus U.S.-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly higher rates of innovation in immigrant-owned firms for 15 of 16 different innovation measures; the only exception is for copyright/trademark. The immigrant advantage holds for older firms as well as for recent start-ups and for every level of the entrepreneur's education. The size of the estimated immigrant-native differences in product and process innovation activities rises with detailed controls for demographic and human capital characteristics but falls for R&D and patenting. Controlling for finance, motivations, and industry reduces all coefficients, but for most measures and specifications immigrants are estimated to have a sizable advantage in innovation.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2019.