Inventor Mobility After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

This study investigates the patenting activities and mobility patterns of East German inventors after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We analyze a sample of 23,950 inventors from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and trace their patenting careers in reunified Germany after 1990 based on a novel disambiguation and matching procedure. The GDR's singular historical context allows us to shed light on the relative importance of specialized versus general human capital, and the role of an inventor's social and political environment in shaping mobility decisions. Our instrumental variable regression results indicate that East German inventors active in technological fields closer to the Western technological frontier were more likely to continue patenting. Those who initially resided in communities with more robust political support for the ruling socialist party had a lower probability of continuing to patent. However, conditional on that these inventors continued to patent, they were more likely to leave their social context behind and move to former West German regions.