Working Paper: NBER ID: w27605
Authors: Benjamin Balsmeier; Lee Fleming; Matt Marx; Seungryul Ryan Shin
Abstract: To what extent does high-growth entrepreneurship depend on skilled human capital? We estimate the impact of the inflow of inventors into a region on the founding of high-growth firms, instrumenting mobility with the county-level share of millions of inventor surnames in the 1940 U.S. Census. Inventor immigration increases county-level high-growth entrepreneurship; estimates range from 29-55 immigrating inventors for each new high-growth firm, depending on the region and model. We also find a smaller but significant negative effect of inventor arrival on entrepreneurship in nearby counties.
Keywords: high-growth entrepreneurship; skilled human capital; inventor inflows; economic growth
JEL Codes: J24; J61; L26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| increase in the number of incoming inventors (O31) | formation of new high-growth startups (M13) |
| historical surname data (N30) | increase in the number of incoming inventors (O31) |
| increase in the number of incoming inventors (O31) | displacement of entrepreneurial activity in adjacent regions (R11) |
| historical surname data (N30) | inventor mobility (O31) |