The contribution of foreign-born STEM workers to the knowledge-intensive economy: Evidence from Sweden

Christopher Baum, Hans Lööf () and Andreas Stephan

No 962, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper investigates how foreign-born STEM workers contribute to the supply of skills in a knowledge-intensive economy. Based on Swedish employer-employee data for the period 2011–2015, we first demonstrate that both economic and refugee-immigrants are less likely to be employed in most but not all STEM-occupations compared to matched native worker. Using wage as a proxy for performance, we then consider employed work- ers and find that both categories of immigrants have higher average wages than comparable natives in STEM-core occupations, economic immigrants have higher average wages in STEM- professional occupations, and refugee- immigrants have higher average wages in the other STEM occupations. These wage differences tend to diminish but not disappear along the wage distribution. The only statistically significant reverse wage gap is found in the upper part of the wage distribution among STEM-professionals, where native workers earn more than workers with a refugee background.

Keywords: STEM; migration; employment; wages; coarsened exact matching; panel probit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 J24 J61 O14 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-10-04, Revised 2024-02-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-int, nep-mig, nep-sbm and nep-ure
Note: Previously circulated as "Economic impact of STEM immigrant workers"
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boc:bocoec:962

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