The mover’s advantage: The superior performance of migrant scientists

doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2013.10.040

Economics Letters

Volume 122, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 89-93

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2013.10.040 Get rights and content

Highlights

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We use newly-collected data on individual migration of 14,299 research-active scientists.
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Observations represent scientists in 16 countries and 4 fields of science.
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We model performance as depending on migrant v. domestic status of the scientist.
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We instrument migration for work or study by migration in childhood.
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We find robust evidence that migration boosts scientific performance.

Abstract

Migrant scientists outperform domestic scientists. The result persists after instrumenting migration for reasons of work or study with migration in childhood to minimize the effect of selection. The results are consistent with theories of knowledge recombination and specialty matching.

Introduction

There is considerable discussion concerning the importance of designing national research systems and immigration policies that attract and nurture international talents (Van Noorden, 2012, Shen, 2013, Mahroum, 2001). This policy debate is informed by a limited, albeit growing corpus of scholarly research aimed at assessing the contributions of high-skilled workers in the host country, especially in the area of science, innovation and entrepreneurship (Stephan, 2012, Kerr, 2013, 183-, Kerr, US High-Skilled Immigration, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: Empirical Approaches and Evidence 2013). Prior studies of inventors and entrepreneurs have shown quite consistently that migrants significantly contribute to technological inventions and patenting (Hunt and Gauthier-Loiselle, 2010, Kerr and Lincoln, 2010) and to the founding of new ventures (Hunt, 2011), at least in the US. However, the evidence of positive differentials seems to be largely attributable to migrant preferences for training in technical and scientific subjects (Hunt and Gauthier-Loiselle, 2010, Hunt, 2011). With regard to the performance of migrant scientists, the evidence is scant and more mixed (see Section 2). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study tries to disentangle the degree to which the superior performance is attributable to migrants being pre-selected among the best and brightest and/or to ex-post treatment that affects performance differentials. Our paper contributes to this knowledge gap and shows that migrant scientists outperform domestic scientists even after using instrumental variables to neutralize the effect of endogenous selection into migration related to ability.

Section snippets

Migrant quality before and after migration

Insights from the knowledge recombination theory suggest that mobility of people facilitates mobility of knowledge and more knowledge from distant sources is associated with greater idea generation and creative attainments (Hargadon and Sutton, 1997, Fleming, 2001). Because knowledge is largely tacit and embedded in individuals, migrant scientists can arguably be exceptionally productive because mobility places them in position of arbitrage, where they can exploit rich or unique knowledge sets (

Survey and data

We surveyed a panel of active researchers during the period February–June 2011. To build the panel we first constructed a stratified sample of journals in four scientific disciplines: Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Materials Science. For each sub-field of these disciplines, we randomly picked a selection of journals and obtained a sample of journals stratified by Impact Factor, containing approximately 30% of all outlets in the four fields. From the bibliographic

Performance of migrant scientists

Our measure of performance is the Impact Factor of the focal article. Fig. 1 shows the distribution of domestic and migrant scientists in the sample, by quartiles of the Impact Factor. Quartiles have been computed separately for each field. It is apparent that the proportion of migrant scientists increases as we proceed from the bottom to the top quartile of the Impact Factor, going from 20.7% in the first quartile to 29.2% in the forth.

We investigate this further with multivariate analysis,

Discussion and conclusion

A question of considerable importance is whether mobile scientists outperform the non-mobile. To answer this important question, we employ a new rich survey designed specifically to study migration of scientists in four fields of science and 16 countries. Results confirm that migrants perform at a higher level than domestic scientists with or without prior experience of international mobility. Superior performance is potentially caused by gains from knowledge recombination and specialty

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge support from Regione Piemonte for the GlobSci project and from the IPE Program, National Bureau of Economic Research. Stephan acknowledges support from the European Commission (FP7) Project “An Observatorium for Science in Society Based in Social Models—SISOB” Contract no. FP7 266588 and Collegio Carlo Alberto Project “Researcher Mobility and Scientific Performance”. The authors wish to thank Massimo G. Colombo, Christopher Parsons, Reinhilde Veugelers and the

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View full text

The mover’s advantage: The superior performance of migrant scientists

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Migrant quality before and after migration

Survey and data

Performance of migrant scientists

Discussion and conclusion

Acknowledgments

J. Urban Econ.

J. Dev. Econ.

Res. Policy

The economics of immigration

J. Econ. Lit.

Recombinant uncertainty in technological search

Manage. Sci.

Science

Foreign born scientists: mobility patterns for sixteen countries

Nature Biotechnol.

Chinese graduate students and US scientific productivity: evidence from chemistry

Rev. Econ. Stat.

The economic consequences of ‘brain drain’ of the best and brightest: microeconomic evidence from five countries

Econom. J.

Technology brokering and innovation in a product development firm

Adm. Sci. Q.

Which immigrants are most innovative and entrepreneurial? Distinctions by entry visa

J. Lab. Econ.

How much does immigration boost innovation?

Amer. Econ. J.: Macroeconomics

The elite brain drain

Econom. J.