The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States

We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation. Leveraging new data, we use age of SSN assignment to identify immigrant status. Immigrants represent 16 percent of inventors, but authored 23 percent of patents. Immigrant inventors contribute to knowledge diffusion across borders. They disproportionately rely on foreign technologies and inventor collaborations. Using variation from premature inventor deaths, we find immigrant inventors create stronger innovation productivity spillovers on their collaborators, as compared to US-born inventors. A simple model implies immigrants are responsible for 32 percent of aggregate innovation, over half of which is due to human capital externalities on US-born collaborators.