Return migration and geography of innovation in MNEs: a natural experiment of knowledge production by local workers reporting to return migrants
利用一家财富500强科技公司印度研发中心的1315名员工数据，发现由回流移民管理的本地员工申请美国专利数量显著更多，表明回流移民充当了知识转移的桥梁。
I study whether return migrants facilitate knowledge production by local employees working for them at geographically distant research and development (R&D) locations. Using unique personnel and patenting data for 1315 employees at the Indian R&D center of a Fortune 500 technology firm, I exploit a natural experiment where the assignment of managers for newly hired college graduates is mandated by rigid HR rules and is uncorrelated to observable characteristics of the graduates. Given this assignment protocol, I find that local employees with returnee managers file disproportionately more US patents. I also find some evidence that return migrants act as a ‘bridge’ to transfer knowledge from the MNE headquarters to the local employees working for them.