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Inventor Diasporas and the Internationalization of Technology

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2016-04
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2016-04-26
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This paper documents the influence of diaspora networks of highly-skilled individuals -- that is, inventors -- on international technological collaborations. Using gravity models, it studies the determinants of the internationalization of inventive activity between a group of industrialized countries and a sample of developing and emerging economies. The paper examines the influence exerted by skilled diasporas in fostering cross-country co-inventorship as well as R&D offshoring. The study finds a strong and robust relationship between inventor diasporas and different forms of international co-patenting. However, the effect decreases with the level of formality of the interactions. Interestingly, some of the most successful diasporas recently documented -- namely, Chinese and Indian ones -- do not govern the results.
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Miguelez, Ernest. 2016. Inventor Diasporas and the Internationalization of Technology. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7619. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24162 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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