The Allocation of Immigrant Talent: Macroeconomic Implications for the U.S. and Across Countries

Serdar Birinci, Fernando Leibovici and Kurt See

No 2021-004, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: We quantify the macroeconomic costs of barriers to immigrant labor-market integration in the United States. We develop an occupational-choice model featuring natives and immigrants of multiple types who differ in productivity, preferences, and the wedges they face that distort occupational choices. Estimating the model with U.S. microdata, we find that immigrant barriers are sizable, especially for recent, non-fluent, and undocumented immigrants. Removing all barriers raises output by 1.5%. While targeted policies yield modest gains individually, jointly reducing barriers related to legal status, language, and the integration of recent immigrants delivers gains exceeding half of those achieved by removing all barriers.

Keywords: immigration; occupational barriers; mobility; misallocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2021-04, Revised 2026-09-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-int, nep-lab and nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.20955/wp.2021.004

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