SITE Working Paper Series,
Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics

Abstract: This paper examines how high-skilled immigrants contribute to knowledge diffusion using a rich dataset of Russian scientists and US citations to Soviet-era publications. Analysis of a panel of US cities and scientific fields shows that citations to Soviet-era work increased significantly with the arrival of immigrants. A difference-in-differences analysis with matched paper-pairs also shows that after Russian scientists moved to the US, citations to their Soviet-era papers increased relative to control papers. Both strategies reveal scientific field-specific effects. Ideas in high-impact papers and papers previously accessible to US scientists were the most likely to "spill over" to natives.

Keywords: high skill immigration; citations; innovation; Russia

JEL-codes: J40; J61; O33

54 pages, November 19, 2014

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