Free Republic

A new paper in the QJE [the Quarterly Journal of Economics], The Global Race for Talent: Brain Drain, Knowledge Transfer, and Growth, by Marta Prato uses extensive data on inventors and their migration to make the following points. (i) gross migration is asymmetric, with brain drain (net emigration) from the EU to the United States; (ii) migrants increase their patenting by 33% a 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% a year when a co-inventor...

On the December day when Congress killed a budget amendment that might have allowed him to become an American a little sooner, Aman Kapoor started a movement. He did not march through streets, carry signs, wave a flag from here or there. He did not walk off the job or file out of school. The computer programmer simply went online to a message board tracked by thousands of people in his predicament: highly skilled foreigners waiting years for their green cards. Immigration reform proposals before Congress have sparked a nationwide political debate. "I think we can do better and really...