研讨论文
Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation
主讲人
范雨华 李欣阳（中国经济与管理研究院2021级本科生）
点评教师
戴田甜 姜神怡 明洋
时间
2022年11月9日12：30-14：00
地点
学术会堂712
活动对象
创新发展学院本科生、研究生
人数规模
30人
论文简介
The paper characterizes the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in the United States, focusing on the role of inventive ability (“nature”) vs. environment (“nurture”). Using deidentified data on 1.2 million inventors from patent records linked to tax records,we first show that children’s chances of becoming inventors vary sharply with characteristics at birth and the gaps may be driven by differences in environment rather than abilities to innovate.We then directly establish the importance of environment by showing that exposure to innovation during childhood has significant causal effects on children’s propensities to invent.Finally we find women and disadvantaged youth are as under-represented among high-impact inventors as they are among inventors as a whole,indicating these “lost Einsteins”would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to innovation in childhood.
