High-skilled Immigrants Research Articles

High-Skill Migration, Multinational Companies, and the Location of Economic Activity

This paper examines the relationship between high-skill immigration and multinational activity. I assemble a novel firm-level dataset on high-skill visa applications and show that there is a large home-bias effect. Foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the US tend to hire more migrant workers from their home countries compared to US firms. To quantify the general equilibrium implications for production and welfare, I build and estimate a quantitative model that includes trade, MNE production, and the migration decisions of high-skill workers. I use an instrumental variables approach to show that the relationship between immigration and MNEs proposed by the model holds in the data. The model is then used to run two counterfactual exercises. The first, evaluates the implications of a more restrictive immigration policy in the US. I find that MNEs play a significant role in how immigration affects the location of production and welfare. In the second counterfactual exercise, I increase the barriers to MNE production to calculate the welfare gains generated by MNEs. I show that a model not incorporating migration would overestimate the MNE welfare gains for high-skill workers by 35% and underestimate welfare gains for low-skill workers by 8%.

Immigration and the Wage Distribution in the United States.

This article assesses the connection between immigration and wage inequality in the United States. Departing from the focus on how the average wages of different native groups respond to immigration, we examine how immigrants shape the overall wage distribution. Despite evidence indicating that an increased presence of low-skilled immigrants is associated with losses at the lower end of wage distribution, we do not observe a similar result between high-skilled immigrants and natives at the upper end. Instead, the presence of foreign-born workers, whether high- or low-skilled, is associated with substantial gains for high-wage natives, particularly those at the very top. Consequently, increased immigration is associated with greater wage dispersion.

High-skilled immigration and native task specialization in U.S. cities

This study examines the effect of high-skilled immigration on the occupational structure of native-born workers in U.S. cities. I find that increases in foreign college workers in STEM occupations, where they hold a comparative advantage over native-born workers, increase the specialization of college natives in social-intensive tasks. Consistent with the productivity effect of task specialization, I find no evidence of displacement effects but do find evidence of positive wage effects of foreign STEM flows on college natives, particularly for those in high-social occupations. Because migration flows are endogenous, I use a shift-share instrument to identify the effect of high-skilled immigration.

Book Reviews

Robert Fairlie of the University of California, Santa Cruz and NBER reviews “The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society,” by William R. Kerr. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Investigates the effect that the global distribution of talent has on the strength of companies and the social fabric of communities, focusing on high-skilled immigration and employment-based migrations.”

Knowledge in Motion: Highly-Skilled Migration and the Role of Regional Networks

This study gives insights into the performance of actor networks in the identification of human capital in form of highly-skilled immigrants and the development and implementation of human capital strategies for this target group, esp. The consideration of multiple actor networks as co-creators and co-producers of a regional human capital agenda focussing on highly-skilled immigrants is a contribution to regional human capital development. Hereby, actors’ networks were studied as a regional resource based on regional social capital. Especially actor networks, which are not primarily created for human capital development, such as alumni networks, are here discussed as innovative actors in the development of bottom-up strategies to attract and bind highly-skilled immigrants.

The limits of skill-selective immigration policies: Welfare states and the commodification of labour immigrants

Why do some countries have more skill-selective labour immigration policies than others? Despite general agreement that high-skilled immigrants are economically and socially desirable, some countries extensively select high-skilled from low-skilled labour immigrants, while others do not. While most political economy accounts indicate an explicit connection between relative skill selectivity and welfare states, two different hypotheses emerge regarding the direction of this relationship. The fiscal cost hypothesis puts forward that the tension between welfare state generosity and immigration motivates greater selectivity as states try to reconcile fiscal pressures for closure with continuing needs for immigration. The decommodification hypothesis, in contrast, holds that the capabilities of generous welfare states to decommodify their citizens also decrease rationales to be more skill-selective towards labour immigrants. Developing an original measure of skill selectivity in labour immigration policies for 20 developed democracies from 2000 to 2010, we test these two hypotheses. Our results indicate that differences in decommodification levels appear to be substantively and negatively associated with differences in skill selectivity levels, while changes in welfare spending over time, particularly among high-spending countries, rather than differences in spending levels, seem to be positively associated with increasing skill selectivity. This suggests potential tensions between the political responses to economic and demographic changes in the form of immigration policy adjustments and the underlying social logic of modern welfare states. The findings contribute not only to the study of high-skilled immigration, but also advance the current research on the tension between immigration and the welfare state.

International Real Estate Review

This study examines the causal effect of the recent inflow of high-skilled immigrants on the housing value of the properties of Hong Kong natives. We categorize homebuyers into local, Mainland Chinese, and other foreigners, and construct neighborhood-level housing profiles based on housing transactions from 2011 to 2016. We estimate the impact of immigrants on housing value at the neighborhood level. By using instrumental variable estimation, we find that recent immigrant inflow does not generate significant impact on the willingness of Hong Kong natives to pay for housing units.

High-skilled female immigrants: career strategies and experiences

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to uncover career-related issues that high-skilled female immigrants face and their strategies for rebuilding their careers upon migration for a diverse range of reasons including following a spouse, furthering education and self-initiated expatriation. Design/methodology/approach Using grounded theory to explore this topic, the authors performed 14 in-depth interviews with female immigrants that fit pre-determined inclusion criteria for high-skilled (e.g. educated, gainfully and professionally employed). The study context of immigration is the USA, and the authors performed interviews with high-skilled immigrants from Turkey – an underrepresented nation in the US migrant population. Findings Content analysis of in-depth interviews revealed five primary theoretical themes that captured the career experiences of these individuals: non-linear career entry, career orientation, strong commitment and will to succeed, socialization patterns at work and support network. Integrating these findings with theories on adult learning, the authors developed an experiential learning model of career reconstruction among high-skilled immigrants. Originality/value This study contributes to the global mobility literature by developing an experiential learning theory of careers and taking a gendered perspective to the career experiences of high-skilled female immigrants. It answers the questions: what are the individual and situation factors associated with career success among high-skilled female immigrants? and what is the process that high-skilled immigrants go through to rebuild their careers?

Intergenerational mobility and the political economy of immigration

Flows of US immigrants are concentrated at the extremes of the skill distribution. We develop a dynamic political economy model consistent with this observation. Individuals care about wages and the welfare of their children. Skill types are complementary in production. Voter support for immigration requires that the children of median-voter natives and of immigrants have sufficiently dissimilar skills. We estimate intergenerational transition matrices for skills, as measured by education, and find support for immigration at high and low skills, but not in the middle. In a version with guest worker programs, voters prefer high-skilled immigrants but low-skilled guest workers.

Public beliefs in social mobility and high-skilled migration

This paper investigates how beliefs of the destination country’s population in social mobility may influence the location choice of high-skilled migrants. We pool macro data from the IAB brain-drain dataset with population survey data from the ISSP for the period 1987–2010 to identify the effect of public beliefs in social mobility on the share of high-skilled immigrants (stocks) in the main OECD immigration countries. The empirical results suggest that countries with higher “American Dream” beliefs, i.e., with stronger beliefs that climbing the social ladder can be realized by own hard work, attracted a higher proportion of high-skilled immigrants over time. This pattern even holds against the fact that existing social mobility in these countries is relatively lower.

High-Skill Immigration, Innovation, and Creative Destruction

Economists have identified product entry and exit as a primary channel through which innovation impacts economic growth. In this paper, we document how high-skill immigration affects product reallocation (entry and exit) at the firm level. Using data on H-1B Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) matched to retail scanner data on products and Compustat data on firm characteristics, we find that H-1B certification is associated with higher product reallocation and revenue growth. A ten percent increase in the share of H-1B workers is associated with a two percent increase in product reallocation rates – our measure of innovation. These results shed light on the economic consequences of innovation by high-skill immigrant to the United States.

Economic Distress and Support for Far-Right Parties - Evidence from Sweden

This paper studies the effects of economic distress on support for radical right parties. Using Swedish election data, I show that layoff notices among low-skilled native-born workers account for 31 percent of the increased vote share for the Swedish radical right party the Sweden Democrats. The effect of layoff notices on support for the Sweden Democrats is larger in areas with a high share of low-skilled immigrants, and in areas with a low share of high-skilled immigrants. These findings are in line with theories suggesting that voters attribute their impaired economic status to immigration, due to labor market concerns. In addition, I use individual-level survey data to show that self-reported unemployment risk is positively associated with voting for the Sweden Democrats among low-skilled respondents while the opposite is true for high-skilled respondents, echoing the aggregate-level findings.

The impact of immigrants' educational attainment on employment in agricultural, industrial, and services sectors in oecd

This article analyzes the impact of immigrants' educational attainment on employment in agricultural, industrial, and services sectors. The research compares data of OECD-20 countries in the period of 1980–2010. The goal of the paper is to analyze the theoretical interpretations of immigration and employment; to measure the impact of immigrants' educational attainment on employment by carrying out an empirical research in selected countries. Empirical analysis has been performed using the methods of descriptive statistics, correlation, regression analysis and System Generalized Method of Moments (GMMs). The results of the empirical research regarding the impact showed that high-skilled immigration has a positive and statistically significant impact on employment in industrial and services sectors, but the impact on employment in the agricultural sector is statistically insignificant. Medium-skilled immigration has a positive and statistically significant effect on employment in all three sectors. However, low-skilled immigration has no effect on employment in either agricultural, industrial or services sectors.

Enrollment in Religious Schools and the Educational Achievements of Children of High-Skill Immigrants

The present study examines the effect of studying in schools of different levels of religiosity on academic achievements of first- and second- generation immigrant students from English-, Spanish-, and French-speaking countries in Israel. The sample included 52,043 students who completed twelfth grade in 2011. The findings of the Israeli case study indicate that choice of school based on religiosity interferes with the educational achievements of immigrant students. In spite of high socio-economic background of immigrant students, those who were enrolled in religious schools were less likely to earn matriculation certificates, as compared to those attending other types of schools.

Enrollment in Religious Schools and the Educational Achievements of Children of High-Skill Immigrants

Enrollment in Religious Schools and the Educational Achievements of Children of High-Skill Immigrants

High-Skill Migration, Multinational Companies and the Location of Economic Activity

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between high-skill immigration and multinational activity. I assemble a novel firm-level dataset on high-skill visa applications and show that there is a large home-bias effect, such that foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the US tend to hire more migrant workers from their home countries compared to US firms. I build and estimate a quantitative model that includes trade, MNE production, and the migration decisions of high-skill workers. The model is then used to run two main counterfactual exercises. The first one evaluates the implications of a more restrictive immigration policy in the US. High-skill industries in the US predominantly reallocate to India and Canada, while real wages decrease for US workers. In the second counterfactual exercise, I increase the barriers to MNE production and find that modeling migration significantly affects the quantitative welfare gains generated by MNEs.

Explaining immigration preferences: Disentangling skill and prevalence

One of the most important and consistent findings to emerge from the study of immigration politics over the past decade is the seemingly uniform preference among mass citizenries for high-skilled immigrants. One potential conceptual flaw in this mounting body of literature is that skill is confounded with prevalence: people may prefer high-skilled immigrants not because they are skilled but because there are not very many of them. To address this possibility, we conducted an original experiment within a nationally representative survey of over 12,000 respondents. We conducted three main empirical tests and found that the skill premium is not confounded by prevalence. However, low-skilled Mexican immigrants specifically are disadvantaged when people are told that they are prevalent, a finding that comports with extant research on the construction of Latino immigration as a unique threat to American society.

Spatial concentration patterns of South Asian low-skilled immigrants in Oman: A spatial analysis of residential geographies

Oman is a major recipient of South Asian labor immigrants, and correspondingly, the demographic statistics reveal that the non-Omani populations primarily are constituted of the Asians. This research examines whether the largest immigrant groups (Indian, Bangladesh, Pakistani and Sri Lankan) in Oman form residential clusters according to their work skills (higher and lower skills). The residential geographies of South Asian workers at the subnational administrative boundaries have been investigated in the current study. Empirically, the study employs the use of Location Quotients (LQ) and Entropy Index within the GIS environment to spatially analyze the immigrant residential distributions based on their work skills. Interestingly, the findings of this research confirm the primary influence of geography on the residential patterns of the low-skilled immigrants. Initially, Al-Batnah governorates constituted the main destinations of low-skilled Bangladeshis. Further, the research also highlights significant clusters of Indian and Pakistani high-skilled immigrants in urban residential communities within the Muscat governorate. In addition, the South Asian are found to be a relatively constant stream of immigrants to inhabit the Omani urban areas, with employments in various public and private economic sectors (e.g. educational, health, manufacturing, finance, business etc.). This concentration pattern of low skilled immigrants is attributable to the need to labor shortages of native populations in certain jobs. The research results also indicate that the rural and suburban communities of Al-Batnah coastal plain not only have a greater number of low skilled immigrants but also display equitable distributions of the four South Asian groups in the residential settlements. For policy makers, it is imperative to understand the spatial patterns of low and high-skilled immigrants in Oman, which exert several geographic, economic, social and demographic implications. The significant role of immigration in development necessitates the identification of the predominant destinations for immigrants. It has been observed that the immigrants are crucial to several sectors of Omani urban economy, and urban areas with a large number of immigrants are more likely to grow and expand faster. In addition, the immigrants’ laborers offer potential economic benefits to the host country, which include fostering entrepreneurial activities, small businesses and reducing wages, especially in unskilled jobs. Despite the negative impacts of immigration (e.g. losing national cultural and creating socio-spatial segregation), the diverse and distinctive locational patterns of immigrant groups in Oman contribute crucially to the socioeconomic development and immigration policy. Yet understanding of the spatial dynamics of immigration in structuring the Omani regions and its influences remains very limited. Thus, further research accounting for the different spatial and attribute ancillary data is necessitated.

High-Skilled Immigrants on the job Markets, Initiators of Change

The global economy faces different types of intercultural conflicts. In the meanwhile, there is a dramatic change in the labor market. These processes are turbulent and have significant impact on the societies. The integration of the immigrants as a phenomenon constitutes a burden and an opportunity at the same time. The context of the synergic collaboration can be consciously determined with the proper application of knowledge management. The aim of the current research is to draw an applicable framework for enhancing the integration of the immigrants and to provide an opportunity to grow the economy and to solidify the interactions within the society by maintaining the social control in the cross-cultural cooperation.

Experimental Evidence for a Link between Labor Market Competition and Anti-Immigrant Attitudes

Anti-immigrant sentiment has become central to politics in Western Democracies yet researchers disagree about its causes. Experimental studies claim to disprove the labor market competition (LMC) hypothesis of anti-immigrant attitudes because high-skilled workers should prefer low-skilled immigrants who do not compete with them, but actually prefer high-skilled immigrants. However, these studies do not account for high-skilled natives' skill specificity which protects them from immigrant competition unlike low-skilled natives. I present a survey experiment with an equal LMC treatment for all skill levels: respondents' actual occupations. The results support the LMC hypothesis: high-skilled natives are 0.27 less favorable towards immigrants in their occupation than other high-skilled immigrants (on a 1-7 scale), comparable to their preference against low-skilled immigrants (0.3 lower). I find low-skilled natives perceive all low-skilled immigration as threatening whereas high-skilled natives only feel threatened by immigration in their occupation, showing LMC contributes to anti-immigrant sentiment.