Immigrants and Innovation in the United States | Economics, Applied | Steven Davis and Rebecca Diamond | Hoover Institution

Immigrants directly account for one-quarter of the economic value generated by U.S. patents. They account for more than one-third of that value after factoring in the collaboration benefits that immigrant inventors bring to native American inventors. Immigrant inventors also play a major role in the two-way flow of scientific and technical knowledge between the United States and other countries. Choking off the flow of immigrant inventors would hamstring the American innovation enterprise and slow the development and diffusion of scientific knowledge.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Rebecca Diamond is The Class of 1988 Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she teaches Data and Decisions. Her current research studies the causes and consequence of diverging economic growth across U.S. cities and its effects on inequality. She is an applied micro economist and founder and director of the Cities, Housing, and Society Lab. Rebecca was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research from 2013 to 2014. She received her PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2013 and her BS in physics and economics and mathematics from Yale University in 2007.

Steven Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Hoover Institution, and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He is ann economic adviser to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, and consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He co-founded the Economic Policy Uncertainty project, the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, the Survey of Business Uncertainty, and the Stock Market Jumps project. He co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, held annually in Singapore. Before joining Hoover, Davis was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business., serving as both distinguished service professor and deputy dean of the faculty.

RELATED RESOURCES:

• The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States
• Rebecca Diamond Website