Full Citation
Title: An Inquiry on the Impact of Highly-skilled STEM Immigration on the U.S. Economy
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2018
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: This article estimates the potential economic benefits of STEM immigration and examines the impact of highly skilled STEM immigration on the wage structure in the United States. Considering that foreign-born share of STEM workers has been increasing rapidly in recent years, there are new interests in examining the extent to which labor market outcomes of natives-and immigrants alike-are affected by this supply inflow. The analysis yields a few main findings. First, U.S. and foreign-born STEM workers with similar skills have a high but finite elasticity of substitution (∼18), implying that the adverse impact of STEM immigration would be more concentrated among immigrant STEM workers themselves. Second, 2000-2015 foreign STEM labor supply shock increases the average wage of preexisting U.S.-born STEM workers by 4.67 percent. This finding, however, masks a distributional consequence of the shock as native STEM workers with higher educational attainment experience lower wage gains. Third, the economic benefit for native workers from 2000-2015 foreign STEM supply shock is approximately 103 billion USD or 1.03% of U.S. GDP in 1999. Almost all of this benefit comes from the productivity spillovers associated with high-skilled STEM immigration that increase the productivity and wages of U.S.-born workers. Finally, the average wage of U.S.-born STEM workers would have been approximately 1 percentage point higher in the absence of the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004. JEL Classification: J31, J61, J68
Url: https://economics.ucr.edu/candidates/2018-2019/Christian-Gunadi-paper.pdf
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Gunadi, Christian
Publisher: University of California, Riverside
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Migration and Immigration, Other
Countries: