Inventor mobility under uncertainty
研究了经济政策不确定性对发明人跨国迁移的影响,发现来源国相对不确定性越高,发明人迁出概率越大,且该效应高度非线性。
Previous work suggests a general uncertainty surrounding the migration process acts as a barrier to outmigration. In this paper, we argue that this barrier is exacerbated when relative economic policy uncertainty is higher in the target country and mitigated when relatively higher in the origin country. We create an inventor career panel to observe inventor migration between 12 European countries between 1997 and 2012. This allows us to test the premise that a higher relative uncertainty in the origin country raises the probability of inventor outmigration. Our results suggest a 1 standard deviation increase in the relative uncertainty of the home country is associated with a near 20% increase in the probability of inventor outmigration. The relationship is highly non-linear, with relative uncertainty values in the top centile leading to an increase of over 70%. The observed effects can be amplified or dampened by inventor specific characteristics, as would be expected given the prior art.