How much of a country's invention is done by people born somewhere else?
Migration and Innovation: Learning from Patent and Inventor Data
Francesco Lissoni, Ernest Miguélez (2024) · Journal of Economic Perspectives 38(1)
Article ↗ · Replication data ↗ (openICPSR)
The archive requires an account we do not hold, so the files were not opened. What follows rests on the published abstract and on this platform's own observations.
What the authors found
Lissoni and Miguélez review what patent and inventor records reveal about migrants and invention. Linking inventors on patents to their origins shows migrant inventors account for a share of invention in host countries well above their share of the population, that they concentrate in particular technologies and places, and that diaspora inventor networks channel knowledge back toward origin countries. Much of the contribution is the data infrastructure itself — disambiguating inventor names and linking patents across offices.
What our data adds
The two national aggregates that would frame this are both here and together they show why the paper needed inventor-level records. Switzerland has a foreign-born share of 31.1 per cent and research spending of 3.22 per cent of GDP; Australia has a similar foreign-born share at 30.4 per cent and spends far less on research. Israel, which leads the world on research intensity at 6.35 per cent of GDP, is not among the highest on foreign-born share. Across countries the correlation between how many residents were born abroad and how much invention happens is weak enough to be useless — which is exactly why the question has to be asked of individuals rather than of countries.
| Figure | Value | Indicator |
|---|---|---|
| Switzerland, foreign-born share | 31.1% | SM.POP.TOTL.ZS |
| Switzerland, R&D spending | 3.22% of GDP | GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS |
| Israel, R&D spending, highest in the world | 6.35% | GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS |
Every figure here is computed from observations in this database and can be charted, downloaded or queried.
What this cannot show
Nothing in this database records the birthplace of an inventor, and no combination of national aggregates recovers it. The observation that the cross-country correlation is weak is not evidence against the paper: aggregation across a whole population averages away the concentrated contribution of a small group, which is the standard reason country-level data cannot answer questions about who does something. Patent counts also measure filing behaviour as much as invention.
The data behind it
International migrant stock (% of population)
SM.POP.TOTL.ZS
WBResearch and development expenditure (% of GDP)
GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS
WBPatent applications, residents
IP.PAT.RESD