The global race for talent is on, with countries and businesses competing for the best and brightest. Talented individuals migrate much more frequently than the general population, and the United States has received exceptional inflows of human capital. This foreign talent has transformed U.S. science and engineering, reshaped the economy, and influenced society at large. But America is bogged down in thorny debates on immigration policy, and the world around the United States is rapidly catching up, especially China and India. The future is quite uncertain, and the global talent puzzle deserves close examination. To do this, William R. Kerr uniquely combines insights and lessons from business practice, government policy, and individual decision making. Examining popular ideas that have taken hold and synthesizing rigorous research across fields such as entrepreneurship and innovation, regional advantage, and economic policy, Kerr gives voice to data and ideas that should drive the next wave of policy and business practice. The Gift of Global Talent deftly transports readers from joyous celebrations at the Nobel Prize ceremony to angry airport protests against the Trump administration's travel ban. It explores why talented migration drives the knowledge economy, describes how universities and firms govern skilled admissions, explains the controversies of the H-1B visa used by firms like Google and Apple, and discusses the economic inequalities and superstar firms that global talent flows produce. The United States has been the steward of a global gift, and this book explains the huge leadership decision it now faces and how it can become even more competitive for attracting tomorrow's talent. Please click here to learn more about the book.

The global race for talent is on, with countries and businesses competing for the best and brightest. Talented individuals migrate much more frequently than the general population, and the United States has received exceptional inflows of human capital. This foreign talent has transformed U.S. science and engineering, reshaped the economy, and influenced society at large. But America is bogged down in thorny debates on immigration policy, and the world around the United States is rapidly catching up, especially China and India. The future is quite uncertain, and the global talent puzzle deserves close examination. To do this, William R. Kerr uniquely combines insights and lessons from business practice, government policy, and individual decision making. Examining popular ideas that have taken hold and synthesizing rigorous research across fields such as entrepreneurship and innovation, regional advantage, and economic policy, Kerr gives voice to data and ideas that should drive the next wave of policy and business practice. The Gift of Global Talent deftly transports readers from joyous celebrations at the Nobel Prize ceremony to angry airport protests against the Trump administration's travel ban. It explores why talented migration drives the knowledge economy, describes how universities and firms govern skilled admissions, explains the controversies of the H-1B visa used by firms like Google and Apple, and discusses the economic inequalities and superstar firms that global talent flows produce. The United States has been the steward of a global gift, and this book explains the huge leadership decision it now faces and how it can become even more competitive for attracting tomorrow's talent. Please click here to learn more about the book.

The papers in the sixteenth volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Innovation Policy and the Economy offer insights into the changing landscape of innovation by highlighting recent developments in the financing of innovation and entrepreneurship and in the economics of innovation and intellectual property. The first chapter, by Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, explores the process of experimentation in the context of financing of technology start-ups by venture capitalists. The second, by Yael Hochberg, also analyzes the role of entrepreneurial experimentation by systematically examining the rise of start-up accelerators. The third chapter, by Heidi Williams, studies the relationship between the strength of intellectual property rights and innovation. The fourth paper, by Fiona Scott Morton and Carl Shapiro discusses recent changes to the patent system and whether they align the rewards from intellectual property with the marginal contributions made by innovators and other stakeholders. The final chapter, by Karim Lakhani and Kevin Boudreau, focuses on the potential use of field innovation experiments and contests to inform innovation policy and management. Together, these essays continue to highlight the importance of economic theory and empirical analysis in innovation policy research.

Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs collects and organize the latest findings on the prevalence of various personality traits among the entrepreneurial population and their impact on venture performance covering academic work ranging from economics to psychology to management studies. This survey focuses on three core themes: (1) the personality traits of entrepreneurs and how they compare to other groups; (2) the attitudes towards risk that entrepreneurs display; and (3) the overall goals and aspirations that entrepreneurs bring to their pursuits. These themes cover most of the main theoretical contributions to the entrepreneurial traits literature, which are quite diverse, while at the same time enabling the identification of common concerns across apparently separate research streams. An appendix provides a short discussion of some major factors influencing entrepreneurial decisions beyond personality: demographics, household assets and financing constraints, measurable skills like work experience and education, and local environment. For those interested in measuring entrepreneurial risk attitudes and personality traits in their own work, an additional online appendix documents some of the survey instruments commonly utilized.