The Impact of Immigration on Firms and Workers: Insights from the H-1B Lottery

Parag Mahajan, Nicolas Morales, Kevin Shih, Mingyu Chen and Agostina Brinatti

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: We study how random variation in the availability of highly educated, foreign-born workers impacts firm performance and recruitment behavior. We combine two rich data sources: 1) administrative employer-employee matched data from the US Census Bureau; and 2) firm level information on the first large-scale H-1B visa lottery in 2007. Using an event-study approach, we find that lottery wins lead to increases in firm hiring of college-educated, immigrant labor along with increases in scale and survival. These effects are stronger for small, skill-intensive, and high-productivity firms that participate in the lottery. We do not find evidence for displacement of native-born, college-educated workers at the firm level, on net. However, this result masks dynamics among more specific subgroups of incumbents that we further elucidate.

Keywords: Immigration; firm dynamics; productivity; H-1B visa; high-skilled migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2024-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dem, nep-eff, nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2024/adrm/ces/CES-WP-24-19.pdf First version, 2024 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Immigration on Firms and Workers: Insights from the H-1B Lottery (2024)
Working Paper: The Impact of Immigration on Firms and Workers: Insights from the H-1B Lottery (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-19

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