Strategic employment of immigrant and native workers: Was the green card lottery a game changer?

Abstract

This paper examines how employers strategically use immigrant and native workers, within the empirical setting of the U.S. Diversity Immigrant Visa (DIV) program and the National Football League (NFL). Strategic organizations determine their own optimal immigrant‐native mix and consider similar actions and reactions by rival employers, a noncooperative game. DIVs exogenously increased the labor market presence of immigrants. I exploit this fact to examine how NFL clubs subsequently altered their employment of immigrant players. Panel‐based empirical analysis illustrates the hypothesized prevalence of matching in immigrant use among rival clubs, sensitivity of that equilibrium to immigration era, and heterogeneous occupational and organizational consequences.