TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kerr,William
TI  - The Agglomeration of US Ethnic Inventors
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15501
PY  - 2009
Y2  - November 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15501
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15501.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
William R. Kerr
Harvard Business School
Rock Center 212
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Tel: 617/496-7021
E-Mail: wkerr@hbs.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2010-03-01
AB  - The ethnic composition of US inventors is undergoing a significant transformation, with deep impacts for the overall agglomeration of US innovation.  This study applies an ethnic-name database to individual US patent records to explore these trends with greater detail.  The contributions of Chinese and Indian scientists and engineers to US technology formation increase dramatically in the 1990s.  At the same time, these ethnic inventors became more spatially concentrated across US cities.  The combination of these two factors helps stop and reverse long-term declines in overall inventor agglomeration evident in the 1970s and 1980s.  The heightened ethnic agglomeration is particularly evident in industry patents for high-tech sectors, and similar trends are not found in institutions constrained from agglomerating (e.g., universities, government).
ER  -