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Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation

Abstract:
We characterize the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in America by using de-identified data on 1.2 million inventors from patent records linked to tax records. We establish three sets of results. First, children from high-income (top 1%) families are ten times as likely to become inventors as those from below-median income families. There are similarly large gaps by race and gender. Differences in innate ability, as measured by test scores in early childhood, explain relatively little of these gaps. Second, exposure to innovation during childhood has significant causal effects on children s propensities to become inventors. Growing up in a neighborhood or family with a high innovation rate in a specific technology class leads to a higher probability of patenting in exactly the same technology class. These exposure effects are gender-specific: girls are more likely to become inventors in a particular technology class if they grow up in an area with more female inventors in that technology class. Third, the financial returns to inventions are extremely skewed and highly correlated with their scientific impact, as measured by citations. Consistent with the importance of exposure effects and contrary to standard models of career selection, women and disadvantaged youth are as under-represented among high-impact inventors as they are among inventors as a whole. We develop a simple model of inventors careers that matches these empirical results. The model implies that increasing exposure to innovation in childhood may have larger impacts on innovation than increasing the financial incentives to innovate, for instance by reducing tax rates. In particular, there are many lost Einsteins - individuals who would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to innovation.
Author Listing: Alex Bell;Raj Chetty;Xavier Jaravel;Neviana Petkova;John Van Reenen
Volume: 134
Pages: 647-713
DOI: 10.3386/W24062
Language: English
Journal: Quarterly Journal of Economics

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

Q J ECON

影响因子:12.7
是否综述期刊:是
是否OA:否
是否预警:不在预警名单内
发行时间:-
ISSN:0033-5533
发刊频率:-
收录数据库:Scopus收录
出版国家/地区:-
出版社:Oxford University Press

期刊介绍

年发文量 41
国人发稿量 2
国人发文占比 3.77%
自引率 2.4%
平均录取率 -
平均审稿周期 -
版面费 -
偏重研究方向 ECONOMICS-
期刊官网 -
投稿链接 -

质量指标占比

研究类文章占比 OA被引用占比 撤稿占比 出版后修正文章占比
100.00% 25.53% 0.00% 0.00%

相关指数

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影响因子
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预警情况

时间 预警情况
2025年03月发布的2025版 不在预警名单中
2024年02月发布的2024版 不在预警名单中
2023年01月发布的2023版 不在预警名单中
2021年12月发布的2021版 不在预警名单中
2020年12月发布的2020版 不在预警名单中

JCR分区 WOS分区等级:Q1区

版本 按学科 分区
WOS期刊SCI分区
(2021-2022年最新版)
ECONOMICS Q1

中科院分区

版本 大类学科 小类学科 Top期刊 综述期刊
经济学
1区
ECONOMICS
经济学
1区
2021年12月
升级版
经济学
1区
ECONOMICS
经济学
1区
2020年12月
旧的升级版
经济学
1区
ECONOMICS
经济学
1区
2022年12月
最新升级版
经济学
1区
ECONOMICS
经济学
1区