Jones concludes that since most of the world's technological innovations come from just a few countries, the whole world is interested in whether migration policies will help or hurt the quality of governance and thus the quality of scientific breakthroughs in these few centers of innovation. Over the past two decades, as economists have begun to use large data sets and modern computing power to uncover the sources of national wealth, their statistical results have continued to point to the power of culture as a driver of nations' wealth. In "The Culture Transplant," Garett Jones documents the cultural underpinnings of income differences between countries, showing that immigrants import from their homelands cultural attitudes - about saving, trust and the role of government - that persist for decades, and probably centuries, in their new homelands. Jones argues that full assimilation within one or two generations is a myth. And the cultural traits that migrants bring to their new homelands have a lasting impact on a nation's economic potential. Based on major, well-reviewed academic research that has yet to break through into the public consciousness, this book offers a convincing refutation of the unspoken consensus that a country's economic and political institutions will not be changed by immigration. Jones rejects the common view that we can discuss migration policy without considering whether migration can, over several generations, significantly transform a country's economic and political institutions. And since most of the world's technological innovations come from only a handful of countries, Jones concludes, the whole world is interested in whether migration policy will positively or negatively affect the quality of governance, and thus the quality of scientific breakthroughs in these rare centers of innovation.