Tag Archives: Skill composition

High-Skilled Immigration and Employment at Multinationals

Britta Glennon reports in an NBER working paper that the two go together.

Skilled immigration restrictions may have secondary consequences that have been largely overlooked in the immigration debate: multinational firms faced with visa constraints have an offshoring option, namely, hiring the labor they need at their foreign affiliates. If multinationals use this option, then restrictive migration policies are unlikely to have the desired effects of increasing employment of natives, but rather have the effect of offshoring jobs. Combining visa data and comprehensive data on US multinational firm activity, I find that restrictions on H-1B immigration caused foreign affiliate employment increases at the intensive and extensive margins, particularly in Canada, India, and China.

Drivers of High Skilled Migration into Switzerland

In the December Issue of Die Volkswirtschaft, Ronald Indergand and Andreas Beerli argue that increased high skilled migration into Switzerland mainly resulted from (i) higher educational attainment in the source countries and (ii) stronger demand by Swiss firms for high skilled labor.

The authors argue that the agreement between Switzerland and the European Union on the free mobility of labor (which is in force since 2002) did not contribute to an improved skill mix. Rather to the contrary, lower barriers to migration for EU citizens might have contributed to a slight reduction in the average skill of immigrants from the EU.