Skilled Immigration, Innovation, and the Wages of Native‐Born Americans

Abstract

The paper examines the effects of skilled immigration on wages that can be credited to immigrants’ contribution to innovation. Using both individual and state‐level datasets from the United States, we find a significant and positive effect of immigration on wages that is attributable to skilled immigrants’ contribution to innovation. Our results confirm previous findings that immigrants contribute substantially to the host economy's innovation, which is a major driver of technological progress and productivity growth. When we augment the analysis to an immigration–innovation–wages nexus, the results suggest that as the share of skilled immigrants in a particular skill group increases, the wages of both natives and immigrants in that group also get a positive boost. We also identify evidence in favor of a positive spillover effect of skilled immigrants on a state's wage level of all workers, including those who do not directly contribute to innovation.

Naturalization and the productivity of foreign-born doctorates

“…However, skilled migrants in the USA have been shown to contribute to economic growth through technological advancements, particularly in the fields of science and engineering (Chellaraj et al 2008;Hunt and Gauthier-Loiselle 2010;Hunt 2011;Kerr and Lincoln 2010). Moreover, studies in the USA have shown that high-skilled immigration has a positive impact on the wages of native workers (Islam et al 2017). While much of the literature on high-skilled immigration has focused on the wage and innovative outcomes of specific visa programs such as the H-1B visa, little research has estimated the effect of granting these workers US citizenship.…”

Review of Literature on The Impact of Foreign Workers on Wages Keywords:Foreign Workers; Wages

“…The presence of foreign workers brings positive impact on the local workers specificallyeducated in accordance with the research Islam, Islam, and Nguyen [15] examine the relationship between skilled foreign workers, innovation, and wages of local workers. This study used two analyzes: data at the individual level for estimation of foreign workers contribute to the capacity of innovation of local and state workers for patent rights to wage levels and unpatented workers.…”

The effect of major customers' geographical distance on enterprise technology innovation: Evidence from China

“…In addition, high‐skilled talent is an important engine for generating innovation. For example, the large number of high‐skilled immigrants in the United States between 1950 and 2000 brought about a leap in innovative capacity (Hunt & Gauthier‐Loiselle, 2010; Islam et al, 2017). High‐speed rails accelerate the speed of talent mobility and increase the overall level of innovation at the enterprise location (Zhang et al, 2020).…”