International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills

Alexander Patt, Jens Ruhose (), Simon Wiederhold () and Miguel Flores

No 6527, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We present the first evidence that international emigrant selection on education and earnings materializes through occupational skills. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have higher manual skills and lower cognitive skills than non-migrants. Conditional on occupational skills, education and earnings no longer predict migration decisions. Differential labor-market returns to occupational skills explain the observed selection pattern and significantly outperform previously used returns-to-skills measures in predicting migration. Results are persistent over time and hold within narrowly defined regional, sectoral, and occupational labor markets.

JEL-codes: F22 J24 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-int, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6527.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2021)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6527

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