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Title: High Skilled Immigration and the Market for Skilled Labor: The Role of Occupational Choice

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2018

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Abstract: In recent years, immigration rates have increased dramatically among the most highly skilled workers. How does this inow aect labor market outcomes among highly skilled native-born workers? I estimate a general equilibrium model in which individuals adjust to skilled immigration by changing occupations and investing into human capital dierently. Moreover, I estimate the demand functions for native and immigrant workers and nd that skilled immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes in some occupations and are complements in others. Counter-factual exercises indicate that even large inows of foreign skilled workers have limited impacts on domestic workers. In particular, the skill rental rates for native science and engineering workers would have been approximately 2% higher if rms were not able to hire more foreigners than they did in 1994. On the other hand, had the U.S. workers been constrained to remain in their original occupations, the adverse impacts of foreign labor competition would be more severe. When natives' occupational choices respond to immigration, the negative eects are diused. The extent to which this occupational mobility helps to absorb the immigration shock depends not only on the substitution elasticity in the directly aected occupations, but also on the demand elasticity of native labor in the destination occupations where natives move to.

Url: https://www.ciqss.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Ma.pdf

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Authors: Ma, Jie

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Migration and Immigration

Countries: United States