TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bahar, Dany
AU  - Rapoport, Hillel
AU  - Turati, Riccardo
        TI  - Does Birthplace Diversity Affect Economic Complexity? Cross-Country Evidence
        PY  - 2020/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 13078
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp13078
        AB  - We empirically investigate the relationship between a country's economic complexity and the diversity in the birthplaces of its immigrants. Our cross-country analysis suggests that countries with higher birthplace diversity by one standard deviation are more economically complex by 0.1 to 0.18 standard deviations above the mean. This holds particularly for diversity among highly educated migrants and for countries at intermediate levels of economic complexity. We address endogeneity concerns by instrumenting diversity through predicted stocks from a pseudo-gravity model as well as from a standard shift-share approach. Finally, we provide evidence suggesting that birthplace diversity boosts economic complexity by increasing the diversification of the host country's export basket.
        KW  - immigration
KW  - birthplace diversity
KW  - economic complexity
KW  - growth
        ER  -