Workshop on the Role of Immigrants and Foreign Students in Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

National Bureau Of Economic Research Inc, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The foreign-born play an increasingly important role in the US Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. This workshop highlights current research and the need for additional research on the roles of immigrants and foreign students in science, innovation and entrepreneurship. The goal of the conference is to increase understanding of the factors that will help the United States maintain and continue to develop a STEM labor force that is of the highest quality as well as diverse and resilient. Understanding how labor markets for innovators and scientists work is important for learning about the drivers of innovation and economic growth. Yet labor markets for STEM workers are complex and their dynamics are not fully understood by economists. Some economists have suggested that foreign students are disproportionately more likely to patent or publish scientific articles, while others have argued that admitting large numbers of foreign students reduces earnings for US-born scientists and weakens incentives for natives to enter scientific careers. Research has shown that immigrants are more likely to start new science-based businesses than natives, but the reasons for this and the implications for policy have not been fully developed. In the context of the current public debate on immigration, there is a pressing need for evidence and consensus-building on the economic impacts of immigration on the STEM workforce and innovation. The workshop is designed to stimulate and share academic research on high-skilled immigration and the STEM labor force, synthesize and disseminate this research to the policy and business communities, and engage in dialogue with these communities to inform researchers about unanswered questions. In recent years, new datasets and promising new empirical approaches to causal inference have emerged that will make significant contributions to the economics literature on high-skilled STEM-related immigration. New work has appeared on several themes within the area of immigration and innovation. Examples of emerging themes in recent research include work related to H-1B visa policies; impacts of foreign students on the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge in the US and on native educational enrollment, employment and wages in STEM fields; return migration of US-trained scientists and engineers; and immigrant high-technology entrepreneurship. The workshop engages interested academic and non-academic experts in a dialogue on these themes.