Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Innovation in the US High-Tech Sector
![The Roles of Immigrants and Foreign Students in U.S. Science, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship](/sites/default/files/styles/book_cover/public/2020-02/The%20Roles%20of%20Immigrants%20and%20Foreign%20Students%20in%20U.S.%20Science%2C%20Innovation%2C%20and%20Entrepreneurship_0.jpg?itok=sM1kG5p_)
We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus US-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly higher rates of innovation in immigrant-owned firms for 15 of 16 different innovation measures; the only exception is for copyright/trademark. The immigrant advantage holds for older firms as well as for recent startups and for every level of the entrepreneur’s education. The size of the estimated immigrant-native differences in product and process innovation activities rises with detailed controls for demographic and human capital characteristics but falls for R&D and patenting. Controlling for finance, motivations, and industry reduces all coefficients, but for most measures and specifications immigrants are estimated to have a sizable advantage in innovation.