The Demand-Side of H-1B Visas: Examining Firm Behavior and Outcomes

主讲人：Kevin Shih (Queens College, CUNY)

主持人：余淼杰、余昌华（北京大学国家发展研究院）

时间：2022年04月12日（周二）上午9:00-10:30（北京时间）

Zoom会议号：926 3889 7210

密码：908060

摘要：

The H-1B visa is the primary pathway for skilled foreign nationals to enter the U.S. workforce. For nearly the past decade, private sector employers wishing to hire H-1B workers have done so through a lottery system where the annual quota of 65,000 visas are randomly distributed amongst applicants each year. While employers play a key role in the selection and sponsorship of H-1B workers, little is known about their participation and behavior in this application process. Using administrative data on H-1B applicants, we elucidate the characteristics of participating firms and analyze their application behavior. To do so we develop a method to impute unobservable applications that were never recorded as adjudicators did not process non-selected petitions during lottery years. We then use exogenous lottery win rates to provide a preliminary assessment of how H-1B visas affect firm performance. Greater win rates reduce firm death. Firms with higher win rates see lower employment and higher average wages relative to low win rate firms. These firm-level adjustments likely reflect that H-1B workers may contribute higher productivity, and that firms that lose the lottery may need to make up for the loss of H-1B workers by hiring a larger number of other, less-productive workers. Losing firms also increase their participation in the H-1B program in subsequent years to make-up for low win rates during the lottery.

主讲人简介：

Kevin Shih is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Queens College, City University of New York. He has received his PhD in Economics at UC Davis in 2015. He received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College. He is a labor economist who specializes in research on the economics of immigration. His work examines issues related to the causes and consequences of international migration flows. His work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Labor Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and the Journal of Public Economics.