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Global mobile inventors

Bahar, Dany, Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Miguelez, Ernest and Signorelli, Sara (2025) Global mobile inventors. Journal of Development Economics, 171. ISSN 0304-3878 (In Press)

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Identification Number: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103357

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.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2024 Elsevier B.V.
Divisions: LSE
Subjects: T Technology
J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Date Deposited: 09 Jul 2025 15:51
Last Modified: 09 Jul 2025 16:21
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/128741

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