Full Description
Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Forward-looking and innovative, Elgar Research Agendas are an essential resource for PhD students, scholars and anybody who wants to be at the forefront of research.
This Research Agenda presents an incisive overview of economic research on the multiple links between international migration and innovation. It both examines the key conceptual issues, explores data and methodological challenges and draws on the most recent empirical evidence to provide novel insights into the migration-innovation nexus and its significance for policy and practice.
Expert scholars analyze the role of migrants in driving innovation, particularly through knowledge diffusion and diversity across workplaces, cities and regions. They engage with these central themes across varied historical and socio-economic contexts, evaluating the contributions of key actors such as migrant inventors and scientists, international students, and ethnic entrepreneurs within both their host and home countries. In so doing, this Research Agenda ultimately advocates for greater integration of migration policies into broader innovation strategies and for a more careful evaluation of global talent flows and their economic effects.
Interdisciplinary in scope, this timely Research Agenda will benefit students and academics in migration studies, economic geography, economics of innovation, human geography and innovation policy. It is also an invaluable resource for policy makers, practitioners and government officers working in areas related to migration or innovation.
Contents
Contents
Introduction to migration and innovation: the journey of a research
field xxii
PART I: MIGRATION AND KNOWLEDGE DIFFUSION
1 Migration and knowledge diffusion: lessons from the early
modern world 3
2 Economic research on migration and knowledge diffusion 21
3 Return migration and diffusion: case studies and micro-
econometric evidence 33
PART II: MIGRATION AND DIVERSITY
4 Immigration, diversity and innovation in cities and regions 47
5 Firm and team country-of-origin diversity and innovation 65
PART III: STEM WORKERS, ENTREPRENEURS AND STUDENTS
6 Migration and the STEM labor market 87
7 Immigrant entrepreneurship: new estimates and a research
agenda 101
8 International students' migration: policy impacts and
implications for innovation 133
PART IV: DATA ISSUES
9 Historical patent data for migration and innovation studies:
evidence from the US 157
10 The international mobility of STEM workers: data sources
and methodological challenges 175
Conclusion to migration and innovation: some reflections for a
policy agenda 193
