Sociocultural Diversity and Innovation
We study the impact of sociocultural diversity on innovation both in the cross-section and a panel of US counties from 1900 to 1940. Using a new measure of sociocultural diversity based on people's surnames and quasi-random variation in counties' surname compositions that arises from the interaction between historical fluctuations in surname-specific immigration to the US and local factors pulling immigrants into counties, we find that sociocultural diversity has a positive causal effect on the quantity (number of patents) and quality (citations per patent) of innovation. The findings support the view that many interconnected brains with diverse cultural backgrounds are at the heart of innovation.
Draft coming soon!