The Gift of Global Talent: Innovation Policy and the Economy

William R. Kerr

NBER Working Paper No. 25875
Issued in May 2019
NBER Program(s):Labor Studies, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

Talent is the most precious resource for today’s knowledge-based economy, and a significant share of the U.S. skilled workforce in technology fields is foreign born. The United States has long held a leading position in attracting global talent, but the gap to other countries is weakening. Immigration policies like the H-1B visa program shape the admissions of foreign workers to the country and grant a particularly strong gatekeeping role to sponsoring firms and universities. This chapter explores the data around global talent flows and some of the economic implications of an employer-driven immigration approach.

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w25875

Published: The Gift of Global Talent: Innovation Policy and the Economy, William R. Kerr. in Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 20, Lerner and Stern. 2020