German Jewish Émigrés and US Invention
Petra Moser, Alessandra Voena, Fabian Waldinger
American Economic Review · 2014 · Volume 104 · Issue 10
Abstract
Historical accounts suggest that Jewish émigrés from Nazi Germany revolutionized US science. To analyze the émigrés' effects on chemical innovation in the United States, we compare changes in patenting by US inventors in research fields of émigrés with fields of other German chemists. Patenting by US inventors increased by 31 percent in émigré fields. Regressions which instrument for émigré fields with pre-1933 fields of dismissed German chemists confirm a substantial increase in US invention. Inventor-level data indicate that émigrés encouraged innovation by attracting new researchers to their fields, rather than by increasing the productivity of incumbent inventors.
Keywords
Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants, Non-labor Discrimination, Chemicals, Rubber, Drugs, Biotechnology, Economic History: Manufacturing and Construction: U.S., Canada: 1913-, Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives, Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
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