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Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 12.
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Working Paper
Firm Heterogeneity and the Impact of Immigration: Evidence from German Establishments
We use a detailed establishment-level dataset from Germany to document a new dimension of firm heterogeneity: large firms spend a higher share of their wage bill on immigrants than small firms. We show analytically that ignoring this heterogeneity in the immigrant share leads to biased estimates of the welfare gains from immigration. To do so, we set up and estimate a model where heterogeneous firms choose their immigrant share and then use it to quantify the welfare effects of an increase in the number of immigrants in Germany. Two new adjustment mechanisms arise under firm ...
Working Paper
Weathering the Storm: Supply Chains and Climate Risk
We characterize how firms structure supply chains under climate risk. Using new data on the universe of firm-to-firm transactions from an Indian state, we show that firms diversify sourcing locations, and suppliers exposed to climate risk charge lower prices. Our event-study analysis finds that firms with suppliers in flood-affected districts experience a decline in inputs lasting two months, followed by a return to original suppliers. We develop a general equilibrium model of firm input sourcing under climate risk. Firms diversify identical inputs from suppliers across space, trading off the ...
Briefing
College-Educated Immigrants Bolster U.S. Productivity
The United States is the largest destination in the world for college-educated immigrants, but their path to employment in this country has become increasingly difficult during the past decade, a condition that can hinder productivity growth. This brief discusses the main contributions that college-educated immigrants make to U.S. productivity growth, such as providing scarce skills that supplement and complement those of native workers, contributing disproportionately to innovation and promoting job creation in the United States by foreign-based multinational corporations.
Briefing
What Makes Supply Chains More Resilient to Economic Shocks?
The recent supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns highlighted the importance of understanding supply chain resilience, which is the extent to which supply chains can resist, adapt to and recover from a sudden economic shock. We analyze the various COVID-19 lockdowns across India to understand which supply chains were more resilient to the lockdown disruptions. Firms that bought more complex products and that transacted with fewer and more important suppliers proved to be more resilient by maintaining buyer-supplier relationships through the lockdowns and exhibiting smaller ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Immigration on Firms and Workers: Insights from the H-1B Lottery
We study how random variation in the availability of highly educated, foreign-born workers impacts firm performance and recruitment behavior. We combine two rich data sources: 1) administrative employer-employee matched data from the US Census Bureau; and 2) firm-level information on the first large-scale H-1B visa lottery in 2007. Using an event-study approach, we find that lottery wins lead to increases in firm hiring of college-educated, immigrant labor along with increases in scale and survival. These effects are stronger for small, skill-intensive, and high-productivity firms that ...
Briefing
How Much Do Multinational Companies in the U.S. Depend on Immigrant Workers?
Foreign multinational firms that operate in the U.S. hire more immigrants from their home countries than from other countries, in part because they facilitate communication between the parent company and the subsidiaries in the U.S. Restrictions to immigration in the U.S. can cause the relocation of production to countries such as India and Canada. Multinational companies drive a big part of this relocation, since they are more intensive on immigrants.
Briefing
Did U.S. Immigration Policy Influence India’s IT Boom?
We highlight an unintended consequence of U.S. immigration policy for high-skill workers. Indian college students and workers got skills in computer science in the 1990s — a key occupation for innovation and growth — with the prospects of migrating to work in the booming U.S. IT industry. However, many ended up not migrating or returning to India after a short period. These workers helped build the IT sector in India, which grew at outstanding rates in the late 2000s.
Working Paper
High-Skill Migration, Multinational Companies, and the Location of Economic Activity
This paper examines the relationship between high-skill immigration and multinational activity. I assemble a novel firm-level dataset on high-skill visa applications and show that there is a large home-bias effect. Foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the US tend to hire more migrant workers from their home countries compared to US firms. To quantify the general equilibrium implications for production and welfare, I build and estimate a quantitative model that includes trade, MNE production, and the migration decisions of high-skill workers. I use an instrumental variables approach to ...
Working Paper
Weathering the Storm: Supply Chains and Climate Risk
We characterize how firms structure supply chains under climate risk. Using new data on the universe of firm-to-firm transactions from an Indian state, we show that firms diversify sourcing locations, and suppliers exposed to climate risk charge lower prices. Our event-study analysis finds that firms with suppliers in flood-affected districts experience a decline in inputs lasting two months, followed by a return to original suppliers. We develop a general equilibrium model of firm input sourcing under climate risk. Firms diversify identical inputs from suppliers across space, trading off the ...