Ethnic Scientific Communities and International Technology Diffusion

Abstract

This study explores the importance of tacit knowledge transfer for international technology di¤usion by examining ethnic scienti…c communities in the US and their ties to their home countries. US ethnic research communities are quanti…ed by applying an ethnic-name database to individual patent records. International patent citations con…rm knowledge di¤uses through ethnic networks, and manufacturing output in foreign countries increases with an elasticity of approximately 0.3 to stronger scienti…c integration with the US frontier. To address reverse-causality concerns, reduced-form speci…cations exploit exogenous changes in US immigration quotas. Consistent with a model of sector reallocation, output growth in less developed economies is facilitated by employment gains, while more advanced economies experience sharper increases in labor productivity. The …ndings suggest tacit knowledge channels partly shape the e¤ective technology frontiers of developing economies.JEL Classi…cation: F22, J44, J61, O31, O32, O33, O41, O57.

Inventor Diasporas and the Internationalization of Technology

“…Thus, for instance, Agrawal et al (2011) provide results for the case of the Indian inventor diaspora in the US. Kerr (2008) extends the analysis to only nine ethnicities -Chinese, English, European, Hispanic, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese -finding that only the Chinese inventor diaspora successfully diffuses knowledge back to its homeland. (Saxenian, 2006(Saxenian, , 2002(Saxenian, , 1999 studies Indian and Chinese migrant entrepreneurs.…”

“…Diaspora networks have been studied in the context of trade (Gould, 1994), FDI (Javorcik et al, 2011;Kugler and Rapoport, 2007), international diffusion of ideas (Agrawal et al, 2011;Kerr, 2008) and further migration flows (Beine et al, 2014(Beine et al, , 2011. In parallel, numerous papers have investigated the internationalization of R&D activities (Guellec and van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2001;Patel and Vega, 1999;Picci, 2010).…”

New linked data on research investments: Scientific workforce, productivity, and public value

“…Gender and ethnicity can be estimated probabilistically from names. (Kerr, 2008; Mateos, 2014, 2007) In addition, data on people who obtain PhDs in the United States can be obtained from matches to the Survey of Earned Doctorates.…”

Impact of Production Linkages on Industrial Upgrading in ASEAN, the People's Republic of China, and India: Organizational Evidence of a Global Supply Chain

“…Keller (2004) gave an overview of the cause and consequences of technology diffusion across countries. Kerr (2008Kerr ( , 2010 and Kerr and Lincoln (2010) studied the role of ethnic scientific communities in technology diffusion to match ethnic scientists' names with individual patent records. Information of demand and technologies could be easily exchanged between manufacturers and suppliers within a (international) production chain, but information exchanges are not always in "encoded" form (Polanyi 1966(Polanyi , 1967.…”