TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Patt, Alexander
AU  - Ruhose, Jens
AU  - Wiederhold, Simon
AU  - Flores, Miguel
        TI  - International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills
        PY  - 2017/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10837
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp10837
        AB  - 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. 
        KW  - selection
KW  - international migration
KW  - skills
KW  - occupations
        ER  -