A growing body of research is making links between diversity and the economic performance of cities and regions. Most of the underlying mechanisms take place within firms, but only a handful of organization‐level studies have been conducted. We contribute to this underexplored literature by using a unique sample of 7,600 firms to investigate links among cultural diversity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and sales strategies in London businesses between 2005 and 2007. London is one of the world's major cities, with a rich cultural diversity that is widely seen as a social and economic asset. Our data allowed us to distinguish owner/partner and wider workforce characteristics, identify migrant/minority‐headed firms, and differentiate firms along multiple dimensions. The results, which are robust to most challenges, suggest a small but significant “diversity bonus” for all types of London firms. First, companies with diverse management are more likely to introduce new product innovations than are those with homogeneous “top teams.” Second, diversity is particularly important for reaching international markets and serving London's cosmopolitan population. Third, migrant status has positive links to entrepreneurship. Overall, the results provide some support for claims that diversity is an economic asset, as well as a social benefit.

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Minority ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation, especially in high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley. Do 'ethnicity-innovation' channels exist elsewhere? Ethnicity could influence innovation via production complementarities from diverse inventor communities, co-ethnic network externalities or individual 'stars'. I explore these issues using new UK patents microdata and a novel name-classification system. UK minority ethnic inventors are spatially concentrated, as in the USA, but have different characteristics reflecting UK-specific geography and history. I find that the diversity of inventor communities helps raise individual patenting, with suggestive influence of East Asian-origin stars. Majority inventors may benefit from multiplier effects.

In recent years, the economics of migration literature has shown a substantial growth in papers exploring host country impacts beyond the labour market. Specifically, researchers have begun to shift their attention from labour market and fiscal changes, towards exploring what we might call 'the wider effects of migration' on the production and consumption sides of the economy -and the role of high-skilled migrants in these processes. This paper surveys the emerging 'wider impacts' literature, including studies from the US, European and other countries. It sets out some simple, non-technical frameworks, discusses the empirical findings and identifies avenues for future research. JEL codes: G23; G24; J15; J61; L5; L26; M12; M13; O31; O32; R11

In recent years, most European countries have experienced substantial demographic changes and rising cultural diversity. Understanding the social and economic impacts of these shifts is a major challenge for policymakers. Richard Florida's ideas have provided a popular-and pervasive-framework for doing so. This paper assess Florida's legacy and sets out a 'post-Florida' framework for 'technology, talent and tolerance' research. The paper first traces the development of Florida's ideas. 'Florida 1.0', encapsulated by the Three Ts framework, has performed badly in practice. There are problems bringing causality to the fundamental relationships, and in consistently replicating the results in other countries, although 'Florida 2.0' suggests that Creative Class metrics have value as alternative measures of human capital. These problems create space for a post-Florida agenda based on economic micro-foundations. I argue that the growing body of 'economics of diversity' research meets these conditions, and review theory and empirics. Urban 'diversity shocks' shift the size and composition of populations and workforces, so that economic effects operate via labour markets, and through wider production and consumption networks. While short term labour market effects are small, over time low-value industrial sectors may become migrantdependent. Diversity may help raise productivity and wages through innovation, entrepreneurship, market access and trade channels. Bigger, more diverse cities help generate hybridised goods and services, but may also raise local costs through crowding. In turn, this presents new challenges for policymakers, who need to manage diversity's net effects, and address both economic costs and benefits.

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We explore place branding as an economic development strategy for technology clusters, using London's 'Tech City' initiative as a case study. We site place branding in a larger family of policies that develop spatial imaginaries, and specify affordances and constraints on place brands and brand-led strategies. Using mixed methods over a long timeframe, we analyse Tech City's emergence and the overlapping, competing narratives that preceded and succeeded it, highlighting day-today challenges and more basic tensions. While a strong brand has developed, we cast doubt on claims that policy has had a catalytic effect, at least in the ways originally intended.