This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.

It may be Silicon Valley that has become synonymous with technological innovation, but over the last decade, some of the most high-profile and successful tech companies—including Tumblr, Venmo, Birchbox, and Etsy—have made their home across the country, in New York City. Now the second largest in the U.S., Manhattan’s tech economy flourished unexpectedly in the wake of the Great Recession, at a time when many Silicon Valley firms were struggling. What factors account for the surprising growth of a tech industry in a city better known as a center of finance, media, and real estate?

During his time in residence, Visiting Scholar Victor Nee (Cornell University) is analyzing data from a three-year research project on the emergence of the new tech industry in lower Manhattan following the Great Recession. Among other factors, he is investigating how the high level of immigrant involvement in this industry has shaped its rapid expansion, as well as the ways in which political and economic institutions aided the growth of the Manhattan tech economy.

In a new interview with the Foundation, Nee discussed the historical precedents of New York’s tech boom and how norms of cooperation among tech workers and entrepreneurs helped jumpstart a new tech economy.

Q. Your current research explores the growth of a new tech economy in lower Manhattan, which you have identified as a bottom-up phenomenon that now makes up the second largest tech economy in the U.S. What factors gave rise to the relatively rapid emergence of these startups? Why was New York an ideal spot for tech firms to prosper, especially in the wake of the recession?

Fourteen months ago, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institution convened a working group of experts from across the political spectrum in order to craft a comprehensive plan for addressing poverty and economic mobility in the U.S. today. Now, after over a year of work, the group has succeeded in creating a non-partisan policy report drawn from the best ideas proposed by an interdisciplinary group of researchers. The report, which addresses the domains of family, work, and education simultaneously, is based on common values supported by nearly all Americans: opportunity, responsibility, and security.

Members of the joint Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity include RSF president Sheldon Danziger, and a number of RSF authors, scholars, and grantees, including Lawrence Aber (New York University), David Ellwood (Harvard University), Judith Gueron (MDRC), Ron Haskins (Brookings Institution), Harry Holzer (Georgetown University), Lawrence Mead (New York University), Ronald Mincy (Columbia University), and Jane Waldfogel (Columbia University).

Authors Karl Alexander, the late Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson have been named winners of the 2016 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education for their 2014 RSF book The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood. In their study, the authors followed nearly 800 Baltimore-area urban youths from first grade through adulthood and found that socioeconomic status trumps education when it comes to life outcomes. Their research spans nearly three decades and challenges the idea that access to public education means equal opportunity.

“Studies of this depth and breadth that include Census data, historical narratives, personal interviews, race, gender, family background, neighborhood and school conditions and social mobility over a lifetime are quite rare,” said award director Melissa Evans-Andris. The research featured in The Long Shadow has been profiled by outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, the Baltimore Sun, and Education Week.