EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Lifting Barriers to Skill Transferability: Immigrant Integration through Occupational Recognition

Silke Anger, Jacopo Bassetto and Malte Sandner

No 2427, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin)

Abstract: While Western countries worry about labor shortages, their institutional barriers to skill transferability prevent immigrants from fully utilizing foreign qualifications. Combining administrative and survey data in a difference-in-differences design, we show that a German reform, which lifted these barriers for non-EU immigrants, led to a 15 percent increase in the share of immigrants with a recognized foreign qualification. Consequently, non-EU immigrants’ employment and wages in licensed occupations (e.g., doctors) increased respectively by 18.6 and 4 percent, narrowing the gaps with EU immigrants. Despite the inflow of non-EU immigrants in these occupations, we find no evidence of crowding out or downward wage pressure for natives.

Keywords: Skill Transferability; Occupational Recognition; Immigrant Integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F2 J24 J31 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-int, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/24027.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Lifting Barriers to Skill Transferability: Immigrant Integration through Occupational Recognition (2024) Downloads
Working Paper: Lifting Barriers to Skill Transferability: Immigrant Integration through Occupational Recognition (2024) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crm:wpaper:2427

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Moritz Lubczyk () and Matthew Nibloe ().

 
Page updated 2025-07-31
Handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:2427