Cognitive Mobility: Labor Market Responses to Supply Shocks in the Space of Ideas
62 Pages Posted: 15 Dec 2012 Last revised: 13 May 2023
Date Written: December 2012
Abstract
Knowledge producers conducting research on a particular set of questions may respond to supply and demand shocks by shifting resources to a different set of questions. Cognitive mobility measures the transition from one location to another in idea space. We examine the cognitive mobility flows unleashed by the influx of Soviet mathematicians into the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The data reveal that American mathematicians moved away from fields that received large numbers of Soviet émigrés. Diminishing returns in specific research areas, rather than beneficial human capital spillovers, dominated the cognitive mobility decisions of knowledge producers.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Ethnic Scientific Communities and International Technology Diffusion
By William Kerr
-
Do Foreign Students Crowd Out Native Students from Graduate Programs?
-
America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Part I
By Vivek Wadhwa, Annalee Saxenian, ...
-
The Ethnic Composition of US Inventors
By William Kerr
-
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and US Ethnic Invention
-
The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1b Visa Reforms and Us Ethnic Invention