CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND INNOVATION IN LONDON: EVIDENCE FROM FIRM-LEVEL DATA

Speaker:  Max Nathan

London School of Economics
London, U.K.

London is one of the world’s major cities – and one of the most diverse in terms of its people, with a wide variety of ethnic groups and countries of birth. Nathan’s research deals with the economics of cultural diversity, focusing on the recent experience of British cities. His talk presents early research findings from an ongoing project looking at diversity and innovation in London. A number of studies link diverse workforces and populations to levels of urban innovation, especially in global cities. While widely explored as a social phenomenon, there has been little work on the importance of London’s diversity for the city’s businesses. Nathan uses data from the 2007 London Annual Business Survey to investigate, exploiting the survey’s unique coverage of both workforce composition and innovation outcomes. From a cross-section of over 2300 firms, he finds significant positive relationships between workforce and ownership diversity, and both product and process innovation. These provide some support for claims that London’s cultural diversity is a source of economic strength.