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Made in America? High-skill immigration to the United States

Posted on:2003-04-28Degree:Ph.DType:Thesis
University:The University of ChicagoCandidate:Bourgeois, Sebastien BernardFull Text:PDF
GTID:2466390011987224Subject:Economics
Abstract/Summary:
This thesis studies high-skill immigration to the United States since the 1960s with a special emphasis on the period beginning in 1980. After a short description of the legal framework of immigration to the United States, I show that the magnitude of high skill immigration is sufficient to have had an impact on the job market for engineers and computer scientists. I then proceed to describe skilled immigrants in more detail using three measures of quality: market performance, number of scientific articles published and whether the person invented a patent. Foreign-borns tend to perform better than their American counterparts. This warrants a quick study of the market for education in the United States. Results indicate that there was no eviction in science and engineering but that the performance of native students is declining in these fields. Combined with international comparisons between achievement levels of students, this suggests that education in science and mathematics in the US could be improved. Finally, a model of the engineering labor market is developed that summarizes the lessons from the empirical parts and aims at measuring the benefit the US has gained from high skill immigration. I find that the stock of engineers would have been around 8% lower without immigration, a very important impact.
Keywords/Search Tags:Immigration, United states
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