Publications
Does Offshoring Manufacturing Harm Innovation? Firm-level Evidence from Taiwan
with Lee Branstetter, Jong Rong Chen, and Nikolas Zolas — Management Science (2026)
Uses a Taiwanese policy shock to show that offshoring production reduces innovation in the offshored product categories, but redirects research resources toward other parts of the firm’s R&D portfolio — evidence that firms actively reallocate, rather than simply lose, innovative capacity when production moves abroad.
Published Version | NBER Working Paper 29117
Press Coverage: The Economist
How Do Restrictions on High-Skilled Immigration Affect Offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B Program
Management Science (2024)
Shows that H-1B visa restrictions caused U.S. multinationals to increase foreign affiliate employment — concentrated in China, India, and Canada — identifying immigration restrictions as a previously overlooked push factor for offshoring knowledge work.
Published Version | NBER Working Paper 27538
Summaries: NBER Digest September 2020 Edition, Cato Institute
Press Coverage: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Protocol, BBC, NPR MarketPlace, Marketwatch
Finalist: INFORMS/Org Science Dissertation Proposal Competition
Does Employing Skilled Immigrants Enhance Competitive Performance? Evidence from European Football Clubs
with Francisco Morales, Seth Carnahan, and Exequiel Hernandez — Management Science (2025)
Using European football clubs, shows that each additional immigrant player raises win probability by roughly 30% relative to the mean. Two mechanisms drive the effect: positive selection from a global talent pool, and that immigrants enable greater strategic variety within the organization.
Published Version | NBER Working Paper 29446
Press Coverage: Forbes, The Weeds (Vox’s podcast, starting minute ~36), Knowledge@Wharton, Aspen Institute’s 5 Best Ideas of the Day (Jan 10, 2022)
Awards: SMS Best Conference Paper Prize Finalist, Strategy Science Best Paper Award
Skilled Immigrants, Firms, and the Global Geography of Innovation
Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 2024)
Surveys the policy environment for skilled immigration in the U.S. and abroad and the evidence that skilled immigrants strongly benefit firm outcomes, then examines the margins along which firms adjust when their access to skilled immigrants is affected by policy — arguing that evaluations of immigration policy must account for its effects on the global geography of innovation and investment.
Women are Credited Less in Science than are Men
with Matthew B. Ross, Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Enrico Berkes, Bruce Weinberg, and Julia Lane — Nature (2022)
Uses administrative data on nearly 10,000 research teams to show that women are 13% less likely to receive authorship credit and 58% less likely to be named on patents than men, even controlling for role, field, and hours worked. Survey and qualitative data suggest the gap arises because women’s contributions are often overlooked or underappreciated, rather than from differences in scientific output.
Press Coverage: Washington Post, Science, The Guardian, The Hill, STAT News, Axios, Times Higher Education, Forbes (Education), Forbes (Business), The Times, El País, Ars Technica, Deutschlandfunk
Working Papers
Substituting Talent with Transactions: Acquisitions as Responses to Immigration Restrictions
with Jens Friedmann and Exequiel Hernandez — Under Review
Finds that firms respond to immigration restrictions not only by offshoring but by acquiring other firms to fill capability gaps — especially small, domestic, skill-related acquisitions.
Awards: SMS Best Paper Prize, Corporate Strategy
The Effect of Immigration Policy on Founding Location Choice: Evidence from Canada’s Start-up Visa Program
with Saerom (Ronnie) Lee – R&R
To spur entrepreneurship and economic growth, an increasing number of countries have introduced immigration policies that provide visas to skilled entrepreneurs. This paper investigates whether these policies influence the founding location choice of immigrant founders, by leveraging the introduction of Canada’s Start-up Visa Program in 2013. We demonstrate that this immigration policy increased the likelihood that U.S.-based immigrants have a start-up in Canada by 69%. Asian immigrants (who have a higher representation in Canada than in the U.S.) are disproportionately more likely to migrate to Canada to start their businesses, whereas Hispanic immigrants (who have a smaller representation in Canada than in the U.S.) are less inclined to do so, and this propensity varies with the size of co-ethnic immigrant communities in the origin location.
Summaries: NBER Digest May 2024 Edition
Press Coverage: Forbes
Building a Wall Around Science: The Effect of U.S.-China Tensions on International Scientific Research
with Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Robert Flynn, and Jiusi Xiao – R&R
Documents that rising U.S.-China tensions caused a ~15% drop in Chinese students entering U.S. PhD programs and an 8–11% productivity decline for U.S.-based ethnically Chinese researchers — a chilling effect extending well beyond any formal policy.
Summaries: NBER Digest October 2024 Edition
Press Coverage: Fortune, The Chronicle of Higher Education, University World News, National Academies Report, New York Times
Mapping the Institutional Pipeline for Global AI Talent
with Caroline Fry — 3rd round R&R
Traces the institutional pipeline through which global AI talent flows from origin countries into U.S. PhD programs and on into industry, showing how fragile and policy-sensitive this pipeline is at each stage.
Doing Frontier Innovation in Non-Traditional R&D Locations: Lessons from U.S. Multinational Firms
with Lee Branstetter and J. Bradford Jensen — R&R
Documents that leading U.S. multinationals have shifted from hub-and-spoke to deeply interconnected global R&D networks, and that more connected research units produce higher-impact patents.
Work in Progress
Immigrant CEOs, with Ashlee Li, Exequiel Hernandez, and Dany Bahar
Connections and Credit: How Social Networks Shape the Gender Gap in Research Output, with Russell Funk, Raviv Murciano-Goroff, and Matthew B. Ross
Production and Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge: Evidence from the Turkish Failed Coup, with Stefano Baruffaldi, Kirk Doran, and Gabriele Pellegrino
Entrepreneurial Spillovers of Migrant Exposure
with Ben Pugsley, Kirk Doran, Zeke Hernandez, and Vinay Ravinder
Book Chapters
The IT Revolution and the Globalization of R&D
with Lee Branstetter and J. Bradford Jensen — Chapter in NBER book Innovation Policy and the Economy 2019, Volume 19. Josh Lerner and Scott Stern, editors. University of Chicago Press.
Documents the globalization of R&D by U.S. multinationals and its particular concentration within the software/IT domain, arguing that a shortage of software/IT-related human capital drove U.S. multinationals abroad — particularly to new hubs such as India, China, and Israel with large quantities of STEM-skilled workers.
Summaries: VoxEU
Press Coverage: Bloomberg, ScienceDaily, ZDNet, CIO Dive
The Weighty Manufacturing Sector: Transforming Raw Materials into Physical Goods
with Erica R.H. Fuchs, Christophe Combemale, and Kate S. Whitefoot — Chapter in NBER book The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth. Aaron Chatterji and Scott Stern, editors. Forthcoming.
Examines the U.S. manufacturing sector’s diverse industries, showing slight growth in value added alongside a declining global market share, and documents substantial variation in employment, R&D spending, and capital patterns across sub-sectors.
The New Global Invention Machine: A Look Inside the R&D Networks of U.S. Multinationals
with Lee Branstetter and J. Bradford Jensen — Chapter in Brookings Global Goliaths: Multinational Corporations in the 21st Century Economy. Fritz Foley, David Wessel, and James Himes, editors. April 20, 2021.
Presents evidence that U.S. multinational firms are creating a global division of R&D labor akin to global value chains in goods production, arguing that this system, properly managed, increases the innovative capacity of the global economy.
Featured in: Brookings podcast, “What’s behind the globalization of R&D?”
Policy Briefs and Op-Eds
“The Importance of Doing Our BIT: The Economic Potential of a U.S.-China Bilateral Investment Treaty,” with Lee Branstetter and J. Bradford Jensen. Chapter 10 in Posen, A. and Ha, J., (eds.), U.S.-China Cooperation in a Changing Global Economy, Peterson Institute Policy Brief 17-1, January 2017. Full text
“The Rise of Global Innovation by US Multinationals Poses Risks and Opportunities,” with Lee Branstetter and J. Bradford Jensen. Peterson Institute Policy Brief 19-9, June 2019. Full text
“Why the Trump Administration’s Anti-Immigration Policies Are the United States’ Loss and the Rest of the World’s Gain.” Brookings Blog. 20 July 2020. Full text
Dormant Projects
The Effect of Fiscal Stimulus: Evidence from COVID-19, with Miguel Garza Casado, Julia Lane, David McQuown, Daniel Rich, and Bruce A. Weinberg