Chad Sparber

• Colgate University

The United States deported nearly 400,000 unauthorized immigrants under the Secure Communities (SC) interior immigration enforcement program between 2008 and 2014. This paper uses variation in the intensity of deportations across immigrants’ country of origin and city of residence to assess the labor market consequences of SC on foreign‐born women....

The H-1B visa program allows companies to hire skilled foreign workers. Before 2014, the vast majority of these visas were allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Since then, the program has been severely oversubscribed and all cap-subject visas have been allocated through lotteries. The authors merged Compustat data with administrative firm-...

The large inflow of less-educated immigrants into the United States in recent decades may have affected US natives’ labor market outcomes in many ways, including their working conditions. Although the general consensus is that low-skilled immigrants tend to hold “worse” jobs than US natives, the impact of immigration on natives’ working conditions...

The USA is the largest source country of worldwide remittances. This paper is the first to use Current Population Survey data to estimate the determinants of remittances originating from the USA for a diverse set of approximately 3800 households with at least one foreign-born worker. We employ a gravity model examining the role of various push, pul...

Highly-educated foreign-born workers can secure legal US employment through the H-1B program. The annual cap on H-1B issuances varies across individuals’ US educational experience, H-1B work history, and employer type. Caps are met quickly in most but not all years. This paper exploits these differences to identify whether firms substitute across d...

The H-1B program allows skilled foreign-born individuals to work in the United States. The annual quota on new issuances of H-1B status fell from 195,000 to 65,000 in fiscal year 2004. This cap did not apply to new employees of colleges, universities, and non-profit research institutions. Existing H-1B holders seeking to renew their status were als...

The H-1B program allows highly educated foreign-born labor to temporarily work in the United States. Quotas restrict the number of H-1B recipients. In many years, all available work permits were allocated by random lottery. This paper argues that an alternative distribution method based upon ability would increase output, output per worker, and wag...

Studies estimating the consequences of immigration on wages paid to native-born workers often reveal small-to-nonexistent effects when using cross city or state variation (the “spatial approach”) but large deleterious effects when using variation across education-by-experience cells (the “national approach”). One mechanism of labor market adjustmen...

Native and foreign-born workers with a high school degree or less education work in different types of occupations. This article exploits the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act to examine whether legal status causes immigrants to work in occupations that use skills similar to those of natives. Legal status decreases the manual skill intensity...

This chapter provides a comprehensive expository survey and synthesis of the theoretical determinants of migration. Early work beginning with Adam Smith, running through the pioneering research of Larry Sjaastad in the 1960s, and continuing through the end of the twentieth century established the broad themes that persist in the literature. Migrati...

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers are fundamental inputs for innovation, the main driver of productivity growth. We identify the long-run effect of STEM employment growth on outcomes for native workers across 219 US cities from 1990 to 2010. We use the 1980 distribution of foreign-born STEM workers and variation in th...

This paper uses a gravity model of migration to analyze how income differentials affect the flow of immigrants into U.S. states using annual data from the American Community Survey. We add to existing literature by decomposing income differentials into short- and long-term components and by focusing on newly arrived less-educated immigrants between...

The 1996 Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act barred states from giving unlawful residents postsecondary education benefits that states do not offer to U.S. citizens. In contrast to this federal law, several states have passed legislation explicitly allowing undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates. We use a difference-in-differen...

This paper employs reduced-form microeconometric analysis to examine how yearly changes in aggregate income and GDP growth affect the unemployment probability of individuals with varied skills in the United States. The paper goes beyond traditional education-based measures and assesses how manual, communication, and quantitative skills affect the r...

SPARBER C. Racial diversity and macroeconomic productivity across US states and cities, Regional Studies. Racial diversity in the USA continues to rise. Past analyses have argued that diversity can have both positive and negative consequences. The overall macroeconomic effects of diversity within the USA require further examination. This paper expl...

The United States is growing increasingly diverse, so it is important that econo-mists understand the macroeconomic consequences of diversity within the US economy. International analyses often argue that heterogeneity reduces macroeconomic produc-tivity by engendering corruption, political instability, and social turmoil. However, other studies cl...

In October 2003, the United States drastically reduced the number of H-1B visas available for foreign-bornworkers. Such restrictions could make U.S. colleges less attractive to foreign students considering an American education as a pathway to U.S. employment. Citizens from five countries are de facto exempt from the visa restrictions, however. Our...

This paper uses a gravity model of migration to analyze how income differentials affect the flow of immigrants into U.S. states. We add to existing literature by decomposing income differentials into short- and long-term components and by focusing on newly arrived unskilled immigrants between 2000-2008. Our sample is unique in that 95 percent of ou...

There is a long-standing debate among academics about the effect of immigration on native internal migration decisions. If immigrants displace natives this may indicate a direct cost of immigration in the form of decreased employment opportunity for native workers. Moreover, displacement would also imply that cross-region analyses of wage effects s...

Large inflows of less educated immigrants may reduce wages paid to comparably-educated, native-born workers. However, if less educated foreign- and native-born workers specialize in different production tasks, because of different abilities, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. Usi...

This paper employs industry-level U.S. census data from 1980 to 2000 to assess the aggregate effects of racial diversity. While most international accounts find that diversity reduces productivity, I argue that the U.S. experience is more nuanced. Unqualified statements about the costs and merits of diversity are unwarranted, as racial heterogeneit...

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform relative to natives in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who first entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa have a large advantage over natives...

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform relative to natives in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who first entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa have a large advantage over natives...

Economic debate about the consequences of immigration in the US has largely focused on how influxes of foreign-born labor with little educational attainment have affected similarly-educated native-born workers. Fewer studies analyze the effect of immigration within the market for highly-educated labor. We use O*NET data on job characteristics to as...

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform relative to natives in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who first entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa have a large advantage over natives...

Many workers with low levels of educational attainment immigrated to the United States in recent decades. Large inflows of less-educated immigrants would reduce wages paid to comparably-educated native-born workers if the two groups compete for similar jobs. In a simple model exploiting comparative advantage, however, we show that if less-educated...

Many workers with low levels of educational attainment immigrated to the United States in recent decades. If such immigrants compete with native-born workers of comparable educational attainment for similar jobs, this inflow would depress wages paid to less-educated American workers and increase wages paid to more educated ones. Using individual da...

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform relative to natives in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who first entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa have a large advantage over natives...

"August 30, 1999; revised March 3, 2000." Honors thesis--Western Washington University, 2000.