American Economic Review Vol. 104 No. 10 2014

German Jewish Émigrés and US Invention

Petra Moser¹; Alessandra Voena²; Fabian Waldinger³

¹ Department of Economics, Stanford University, 579 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, and NBER (e-mail: ) · ² Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, and NBER (e-mail: ) · ³ University of Warwick, Coventry, CV47AL, United Kingdom (e-mail: ).

Abstract

Historical accounts suggest that Jewish migrs from Nazi Germany revolutionized U.S. science. To analyze the migrs' effects on chemical innovation in the U.S. we compare changes in patenting by U.S. inventors in research fields of migrs with fields of other German chemists. Patenting by U.S. inventors increased by 31 percent in migr fields. Regressions that instrument for migr fields with pre-1933 fields of dismissed German chemists confirm a substantial increase in U.S. invention. Inventorlevel data indicate that migrs encouraged innovation by attracting new researchers to their fields, rather than by increasing the productivity of incumbent inventors.

DOI

10.1257/aer.104.10.3222

Volume

104

Issue

10

Pages

3222-3255

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex openalex

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