The Soviet émigré career premium of the 1990s was structural to the receiving market, not a talent gradient among who left

Vitaly Pronskikh's preprint Selling the Stock, Not the Cream argues that the divergent career outcomes of former-Soviet scientists who emigrated to the West in the 1990s are explained by when they arrived, not by who they were. Comparing scientists of comparable ability who left in different years, the paper finds that "the same kind of scientist fared differently according to the year of arrival; the explanation therefore lies in the structure of the receiving market, not in individual ability."

The methodological move is a natural-experiment framing: hold ability roughly constant and vary only arrival year, so that any systematic difference in outcome must be attributed to the changing structure of the receiving labor market rather than to a quality gradient among emigrants. This directly opposes the prevailing "elite left first" account (associated with Graham and Dezhina), under which earlier arrivals did better because the best scientists emigrated soonest — a selection story about individuals rather than a structural story about markets.

The positive mechanism the paper offers for that changing structure — a finite, distinctive stock of Soviet expertise that commanded a premium until it diffused — is treated separately in claim-soviet-expertise-was-finite-stock-depleted-as-it-diffused. The concrete legal instrument that shaped the early window is claim-soviet-scientists-immigration-act-1992-exceptional-ability-waiver.

The claim rests entirely on one recent, un-refereed preprint stating its own thesis; whether it survives against the account it aims to overturn is tracked in question-soviet-emigre-career-premium-corroboration.