Why restrictive immigration may be bad for U.S. entrepreneurship
A new study finds immigrants are more likely to start a company than their U.S.-born counterparts.
Faculty
Pierre Azoulay is the International Programs Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
His current research focuses on empirical studies of the supply of biomedical innovators, particularly at the interface of academia and the biopharmaceutical industry. He also is interested in the topic of academic entrepreneurship, having recently concluded a major study of the antecedents and consequences of academic patenting. In the past, he has investigated the impact of superstar researchers on the research productivity of their colleagues, and the outsourcing strategies of pharmaceutical firms, in particular the role played by contract research organizations in the clinical trials process.
At MIT Sloan, he teaches courses on competitive strategy and innovation strategy to the EMBA students and Sloan Fellows, as well as a PhD class on the economics of ideas, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
He holds a Diplôme d’Études Supérieures de Gestion from the Institut National des Télécommunications, an MA from Michigan State University, and a PhD in management from MIT.
Azoulay, Pierre, Benjamin Jones, Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda. American Economic Review: Insights Vol. 2, No. 1 (2020): 65-82. Download Paper.
Azoulay, Pierre, Benjamin Jones, J. Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda. American Economic Review: Insights Vol. 4, No. 1 (2022): 71-88. Download Paper. Also NBER Working Paper #27778.
Azoulay, Pierre, and Danielle Li. In Innovation and Public Policy, edited by Austan Goolsbee and Ben Jones, 117-150. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022. NBER Working Paper #26889.
Azoulay, Pierre and Ariel Y. Fishman, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6050-20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, December 2021. Also NBER Working Paper #26892.
Azoulay, Pierre, Misty L. Heggeness, and Jennifer Kao, MIT Sloan Working Paper 5926-19. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, October 2021. Also NBER Working Paper #27943.
Azoulay, Pierre, Wesley H. Greenblatt, and Misty L. Heggeness. Research Policy Vol. 50, No. 9 (2021): 104332. NBER Working Paper #26069. Non-technical summary of the paper. Download Paper.
A new study finds immigrants are more likely to start a company than their U.S.-born counterparts.
Based on prior research on life-science breakthroughs, the government should espouse two broad principles for orchestrating innovation activities dedicated to bringing the pandemic to an end.
"The thing that this debate has ignored to date is the possibility that immigrants are not just employees of firms. They can also create firms."
Danielle Li and Pierre Azoulay note that the DARPA model does best when its directors have an understanding of needed breakthroughs.
"Immigrants found more firms in every bucket. ... They create all kinds of businesses, and they create a lot of them."
"Immigrants create more firms pretty much in every size bucket."
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