Using a new database that matches patent applications by Swedish residents with demographic information from 1985 to 2007, we examine differences in inventive performance by individuals of foreign and domestic origins, in terms of quantity (probability of patenting, total number of patents per inventor) and quality (forward citations, probability of grant) of patents. We further compare adult and child immigrants with their Swedish-born counterparts. Holding other variables constant, we find that the immigrants are generally less likely to patent than the Swedish-born. Nonetheless, the general group of immigrant inventors, including those who migrated as adults, perform as well as the native inventors and therefore seem more positively selected. Compared with the Swedish-born, the immigrants who migrated as children are disadvantaged in both quantity and quality of patents, which may be linked to a lack of Sweden-specific human capital. Whether education was received in Sweden does not seem to make a difference for the immigrants who migrated as adults. In summary, this study provides an initial impression of the inventive performance, contribution, and challenges of distinct groups of immigrants who have differing characteristics and backgrounds.

Migration policies can have a strong impact on the selection of immigrants, who in turn can affect the host country's innovation development. This paper examines the effects of the liberalization of migration on the skill composition of immigrants from the EU-15 to Sweden after the inception of the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1994. We examine its effect on immigrants' education levels and probability of becoming an inventor, comparing immigrants from the EU-15 with those from other developed regions in difference-indifferences regressions. The results show that the liberalization of migration had a negative effect on the educational profile of new EU-15 immigrants in the short run, but there is no such effect in the long run. Moreover, the liberalization of migration has no systematic effect on the EU-15 immigrants' probability of becoming an inventor in neither the short nor the long run. These patterns are consistent with the theoretical implication that reduction in migration costs associated with the EEA mainly stimulated migration from the lower end of the education distribution.