National Conflict and High-Skilled Immigrants’ Workplace Efforts: Evidence from the U.S.–China Conflict
研究发现，美中冲突加剧后，华裔高技能移民（如发明家、大学毕业生）因身份相关的职业担忧，显著增加了工作努力，且效应在更脆弱的群体中更强。
This paper shows that high-skilled immigrants strategically increase their workplace efforts in response to identity-based career concerns that intensify following national conflicts between their countries of origin and host countries. Leveraging the rapid escalation of the U.S.–China conflict following the 2016 U.S. presidential election in the difference-in-differences framework, we show that Chinese-descent inventors in the United States significantly increased their workplace efforts compared with their Korean- and Japanese-descent counterparts. Consistent with our theory, this effect is more pronounced among Chinese-descent inventors more vulnerable to identity-based career concerns, including midcareer migrants, those with ethnically distinctive first names, corporate inventors more dependent on immigration sponsorship than academic counterparts, and those residing in counties with higher levels of Trump support. Furthermore, using a nationally representative survey, we find that Chinese-descent college-educated workers in the United States reported working significantly more hours than their Korean and Japanese counterparts following the conflict. This study contributes to our understanding of how high-skilled immigrants adjust their workplace efforts in response to geopolitical tensions. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2024.19031 .