Skilled Labor Uncertainty and Corporate Investment: Evidence from H-1B Visa Lottery Cycles
利用H-1B签证抽签周期，研究发现企业投资集中在抽签结果公布后的季度，且这一效应在资本难以重新配置、难以找到国内替代劳动力的行业和公司中更显著。
We study how periodic uncertainty about skilled labor supply affects corporate investment using the H-1B visa program for skilled workers as an empirical setting. Exploiting cross-regional variation in H-1B labor flows based on historical immigrant enclaves, we find that firms in regions that attract more H-1B workers concentrate their investments in the quarter after uncertainty about visa access is resolved by the H-1B lottery. Consistent with a skilled labor uncertainty channel, we find that the investment spikes are confined to industries where invested capital cannot be easily redeployed, to firms that cannot easily find domestic substitutes for lost H-1B workers, and to firms that cannot easily arrange alternative employment visas for their foreign employees. This paper was accepted by Camelia Kuhnen, finance. Funding: S.-J. Xu gratefully acknowledges research support from the University of Alberta. Supplemental Material: The internet appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03486 .