How does inventors’ migration affect international talent allocation, knowledge diffusion, and productivity growth? To answer this question, I build a novel two-country innovation-led endogenous growth model, where heterogeneous inventors produce innovations, learn from others, and make dynamic migration and return decisions. Migrants interact with individuals at origin and destination, diffusing knowledge within and across countries. To quantify this framework, I construct a micro-level dataset of migrant inventors on the US-EU corridor from patent data and document that (i) gross migration is asymmetric, with brain drain (net emigration) from the EU to the US; (ii) migrants increase their patenting by 33% per year after migration; (iii) migrants continue working with inventors at origin after moving, although less frequently; (iv) migrants’ productivity gains spill over to their collaborators at origin, who increase patenting by 16% per year when a co-inventor emigrates. I calibrate the model to match the empirical results and study the impact of innovation and migration policy. A tax cut for foreigners and return migrants in the EU that eliminates the brain drain increases EU innovation but lowers US innovation and knowledge spillovers. The former effect dominates in the first 25 years, increasing EU productivity growth by 3%, but the latter dominates in the long-run, lowering growth by 3%. On the migration policy side, doubling the size of the US H1B visa program increases US and EU growth by 4% in the long-run, because it sorts inventors to where they produce more innovations and knowledge spillovers.

中文翻译：

---

全球人才竞赛：人才流失、知识转移和增长


发明家移民如何影响国际人才配置、知识传播和生产率增长？为了回答这个问题，我建立了一个新颖的两国创新主导的内生增长模型，其中异质性发明者产生创新，向他人学习，并做出动态的迁移和返回决策。移民在原籍地和目的地与个人互动，在国家内部和国家之间传播知识。为了量化这个框架，我根据专利数据构建了一个美欧走廊移民发明者的微观数据集，并记录了 （i） 总移民是不对称的，人才流失（净移民）从欧盟到美国;（ii） 移民在移民后每年增加 33% 的专利申请;（iii） 移徙者在移居后继续在原籍地与发明人合作，但频率较低;（iv） 移民的生产力提高会溢出到原籍国的合作者，当共同发明人移民时，他们每年的专利申请量会增加 16%。我校准模型以匹配实证结果，并研究创新和移民政策的影响。对欧盟的外国人和回国移民减税，消除人才流失，增加了欧盟的创新，但降低了美国的创新和知识溢出效应。前者效应在前 25 年占主导地位，使欧盟生产率增长了 3%，但从长期来看，后者占主导地位，使增长率下降了 3%。在移民政策方面，从长远来看，将美国 H1B 签证计划的规模扩大一倍将使美国和欧盟的增长增加 4%，因为它将发明者分类到他们产生更多创新和知识溢出的地方。