Talents and Cultures : Immigrant Inventors and Ethnic Diversity in the Age of Mass Migration

We investigate the importance of co-ethnic networks and diversity in determining immigrant inventors’ settlements in the US by following the location choices of thousands of them across counties during the Age of Mass Migration. To do so, we combine a unique USPTO historical patent dataset on immigrants who arrived as adults with Census data, and exploit exogenous variation in both immigration flows and diversity induced by former settlements, WWI and the 1920s Immigration Acts. We find that co-ethnic networks play an important role in attracting immigrant inventors. Yet, we also find that immigrant diversity acts as an additional significant pull factor. This is mainly due to externalities that foster immigrant inventors’ productivity