Migration, communities on the move and international innovation networks: an empirical analysis of Spanish regions
研究了移民如何作为跨国知识桥梁促进地区与外国之间的合作发明网络，发现移民和侨民的社会资本、语言共通性及人力资本正向调节这一作用，对西班牙省份与外国合作发明数据的分析支持了上述假设。
This paper investigates the impact of migration on innovation networks between regions and foreign countries. It posits that immigrants (emigrants) act as a transnational knowledge bridge between the host (home) regions and their origin (destination) countries, thus facilitating their co-inventorship networks. It also argues that the social capital of both the hosting and the moving communities reinforces such a bridging role, along with language commonality and migrants’ human capital. Focusing on Spain, as a country that hosted an intense process of migration over the past two decades, patent data are combined with national data on residents and electors abroad and a gravity model is applied to the co-inventorship between Spanish provinces (NUTS-3 regions) and a number of foreign countries. Both immigrants and emigrants affect the kind of innovation networking at stake. The social capital of both the moving and the hosting communities actually moderates this impact positively. The effect of migration is stronger for more skilled migrants and with respect to non-Spanish-speaking countries, pointing to a language-bridging role of migrants. Policy implications are drawn accordingly.