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Give Me Your Wired and Your Highly Skilled: Measuring the Impact of Immigration Policy on Employers and Shareholders

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  • Lin, Carl

    (Bucknell University)

Abstract

The paper links finance theory to labor economics and political economy in the context of migration and immigration policy. Most research treating the impact of immigration has focused on the consequences for employees as measured by wages, earnings, and employment. Less is known about the impact on employers. We lack answers to basic questions concerning the quantitative impact of immigrants on employer profit, and which employers are most likely to gain (suffer) increased (reduced) profits as a result of immigration. Using event study analysis, I measure the impact of immigration policy on the profit of employers and shareholders, particularly in those industries with high needs for skilled immigrants. The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) of 1998 nearly doubled the available number of H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers in FY 1999. It was the first time that the U.S. government raised the annual cap of H-1B visa since 1990. I focus on this bill and analyze whether and by how much its passage increased shareholders’ profit. The empirical results show that employers and shareholders in the top H-1B visa user industries enjoyed significant and positive returns with the passage of the ACWIA of 1998. Shareholders in high-tech industries (the top users of H-1B visa, 80% of total) such as "Computers and related equipment", and "Computer and data processing services" gained, respectively, an average 21.54% (15.88 if weighted) and 22.77% (18.11 if weighted) in cumulative excess returns in the month after the Act was passed, while industries with little need for H-1B visas experienced no significant changes in cumulative excess returns. Robustness testing including international factor comparisons, semiparametric modeling and a sample-split Chow structural break test support the results.

Suggested Citation

  • Lin, Carl, 2011. "Give Me Your Wired and Your Highly Skilled: Measuring the Impact of Immigration Policy on Employers and Shareholders," IZA Discussion Papers 5754, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5754
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    Cited by:

    1. Andr� Betzer & Markus Doumet & Ulf Rinne, 2013. "How policy changes affect shareholder wealth: the case of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(8), pages 799-803, May.
    2. Lin, Carl, 2012. "Less Myth, More Measurement: Decomposing Excess Returns from the 1989 Minimum Wage Hike," IZA Discussion Papers 6269, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Lin, Carl, 2011. "Decomposing Excess Returns in Stochastic Linear Models," IZA Discussion Papers 6237, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    skilled immigrants; immigration policy; employers; shareholders; event study; H-1B visa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

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