Petra Moser

Title: Immigration, Science, and Invention: Lessons from the Quota Acts

Abtract: In the 1920s, the United States introduced immigration quotas to restrict arrivals of low-skilled workers from Eastern and Southern Europe (ESE), while explicitly exempting scientists and students. Using biographical data on more than 80,000 American scientists, linked with their patents, we document the quotas’ unintended effects on US science and innovation. After the quotas, fewer ESE-born scientists came to study and work in the United States. Using a global bibliometric database linking scientists with their publications, employers, and research fields, we identify fields in which ESE-based science was dominant before the quotas. Comparing changes in US innovation across fields, we document a large and persistent decline in US innovation in the pre-quota fields of ESE-based scientists. This decline is especially pronounced for US-born inventors. Decomposition exercises suggest that the quotas reduced innovation by lowering the productivity of incumbent scientists and by replacing immigrants with less productive natives. As US scientists produced fewer innovations in ESE fields, Canada gained relative to the United States.