Skilled Immigration, Innovation, and the Wages of Native‐Born Americans
研究利用美国个体和州级数据,发现技术移民通过促进创新显著提高了本土工人和移民自身的工资,并产生正向溢出效应。
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.