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Immigration, Innovation, and Growth

Stephen Terry et al.

The American Economic Review2026https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20211601preprint
FT50AJG 4*ABDC A*
Weight
0.48

Abstract

We propose a novel identification strategy to isolate exogenous immigration shocks across US counties, by interacting quasi-random variations in the composition of ancestry across counties with the contemporaneous inflow of migrants from different countries. We show a positive causal impact of immigration on local innovation and wages at the five-year horizon. The positive dynamic impact of immigration on innovation and wages dominates the short-run negative impact of increased labor supply. A structural estimation of a model of endogenous growth and migrations suggests the increased immigration to the United States since 1965 may have increased innovation and wages by 5 percent. (JEL J15, J22, J31, J61, O31, R11, R23)

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20211601

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@article{stephen2026,
  title        = {{Immigration, Innovation, and Growth}},
  author       = {Stephen Terry et al.},
  journal      = {The American Economic Review},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20211601},
}

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Immigration, Innovation, and Growth

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Evidence weight

0.48

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.41 × 0.4 = 0.16
M · momentum0.60 × 0.15 = 0.09
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.