Full Steam Ahead : Steamships, Global Migration and Regional Innovation
How does an innovation in transportation technology affect migrants’ choice of destination country and innovative activity at destination? To address this question, I study the transition from sail boats to steamships during the Age of Mass Migration. Since sea surface winds between origin and destination were a determining factor in travel time by sail, the reduction in travel time when transitioning from sail to steam depends on exogenous wind patterns (Pascali 2017). Using newly transcribed data on international migrations from 1830 to 1880, I exploit the disproportionate decrease in between-country travel times to show that a one percent decrease in travel time increases the number of migrants by two percent. I propose a new instrument for U.S. immigration based on the steamship. I show that steamship induced migrants increased county-level innovation such that a one percentile increase in immigrant share among counties led to 0.49 more patents. Had steamships not been introduced, the median U.S. county would have registered three fewer patents in 1880
Year of publication: |
2022
|
---|---|
Authors: | Shen, Qingyang |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Welt | World | Innovation | Internationale Migration | International migration | Globalisierung | Globalization | Arbeitsmigranten | Migrant workers |
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