October 2024
Article
Journal of Development Economics

Global Mobile Inventors

By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ernest Miguelez and Sara Signorelli

Format:Print
| Pages:12

Abstract

The number of Global Mobile Inventors (GMIs), inventors moving across borders during their career, has increased more than tenfold over the past two decades, and the corridors of mobility have shifted towards a growing presence of emerging markets. We document that GMIs that have patented in a given technology before moving are 70% more likely to be among the pioneering inventors in that technology once they arrive at destination, which we interpret as evidence of knowledge diffusion across borders. Returnees, which are typically inventors from emerging markets that go back after having spent some time in the US and other advanced economies, are twice as likely to file pioneering patents once returned than migrants when arriving abroad. Finally, we find that the more central the GMIs in the network of inventors during the early stages of the technology life-cycle at destination, the faster the technology-specific knowledge is absorbed by local inventors.

Keywords

Emerging Markets; Immigration; Patents; Knowledge; Technological Innovation

Citation

Bahar, Dany, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ernest Miguelez, and Sara Signorelli. "Global Mobile Inventors." Art. 103357. Journal of Development Economics 171 (October 2024).