TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Ghosh, Anirban
AU  - Mayda, Anna Maria
AU  - Ortega, Francesc
        TI  - The Impact of Skilled Foreign Workers on Firms: An Investigation of Publicly Traded U.S. Firms
        PY  - 2014/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 8684
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp8684
        AB  - Many U.S. businessmen are vocally in favor of an increase in the number of H-1B visas. Is there systematic evidence that this would positively affect firms' productivity, sales, employment or profits? To address these questions we assemble a unique dataset that matches all labor condition applications (LCAs) – the first step towards H-1B visas for skilled foreign-born workers in the U.S. – with firm-level data on publicly traded U.S. firms (from Compustat). Our identification is based on the sharp reduction in the annual H-1B cap that took place in 2004, combined with information on the degree of dependency on H-1B visas at the firm level as in Kerr and Lincoln (2010).
The main result of this paper is that if the cap on H-1B visas were relaxed, a subset of firms would experience gains in average labor productivity, firm size, and profits. These are firms that conduct R&D and are heavy users of H-1B workers – they belong to the top quintile among filers of LCAs. These empirical findings are consistent with a heterogeneous-firms model where innovation enhances productivity and is subject to fixed costs.
        KW  - immigration
KW  - skills
KW  - productivity
KW  - visas
KW  - R&D
        ER  -