This paper documents the influence of diaspora networks of highly-skilled individuals-that is, inventors-on international technological collaborations. Using gravity models, it studies the determinants of the internationalization of inventive activity between a group of industrialized countries...

An increasing number of studies have sprung up in recent years seeking to identify individual inventors from patent data. Different heuristics have been suggested to use their names and other information disclosed in patent documents in order to find out, “who is who,” in patents. This paper...

Based on an original dataset linking patent data and biographical information for a large sample of US immigrant inventors with Indian names and surnames, specialized in ICT technologies, we investigate the rate and determinants of return migration. For each individual in the dataset, we both...

An inventor's own knowledge is a key input in the innovation process. This knowledge can be built by interacting with and learning from others. This paper uses a new large-scale panel dataset on European inventors matched to their employers and patents. We document key empirical facts on...

How do regions enter new and distant technological fields? Who is triggering this process? This work addresses these compelling research questions by investigating the role of migrant inventors in the process of technological diversification. Immigrant inventors can indeed act as carriers of...

This paper has two objectives. First, it describes a new database mapping migratory patterns of inventors, extracted from information included in patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. We explain in detail the information contained in the database and discuss the...