Applied Economics Seminar Series. "Selective Immigration Policies and the U.S. Labor Market"
Published: 26 February 2025
12 March 2025. Professor Joan Llull, IAE-CSIC and BSE
Professor Joan Llull, IAE-CSIC (Institute for Economic Analysis) and BSE (Barcelona School of Economics)
"Selective Immigration Policies and the U.S. Labor Market"
Wednesday, 12 March 2025. 15:00-16:30
Room 141A, Adam Smith Business School Building
Abstract
While immigration of unskilled workers often generates controversy in the political arena, there is often more consensus in favor of selective immigration policies. This paper studies the effects of selective immigration policies on the labor market. High skilled immigration introduces two potentially confronting forces on labor market prospects of native workers: first, it increases the competition for skilled jobs, reducing labor market opportunities, and, as a result, reducing native incentives to invest in human capital; second, it increases productivity through spillovers and technological progress. I pose and estimate a labor market equilibrium dynamic discrete choice model that can account for these effects. The estimated model is used to evaluate the labor market consequences of the two most important skill-biased immigration policies in recent U.S. history: the introduction of H-1B visa program in 1990, and the elimination of the National Origins Formula in 1965. Finally, I use the model to predict the level of selectivity of immigration policy that maximizes native workers' wellbeing.
Bio
Joan Llull is Research Professor at the Institute for Economic Analysis (IAE-CSIC) and Associate Research Professor of the Barcelona School of Economics (BSE). He is also an External Fellow at CReAM (UCL). He received his PhD from CEMFI in 2011.
Prior to joining CSIC, he worked at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and MOVE.
Professor Llull’s research focuses on labor economics, and more specifically on immigration, internal migration, occupational mobility, inequality, human capital, family economics, and health. His main research typically estimates dynamic discrete choice models of equilibrium, but several of his papers also use more reduced form approaches.
His work has been published in the Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Human Resources, and the European Economic Review, among others. His research has been funded by prestigious grants, including a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
Llull is the Data Editor of the Econometric Society (for its journals Econometrica, Quantitative Economics, and Theoretical Economics) and editorial board member of the Review of Economic Studies. He has also served as Data Editor at the Economic Journal and the Econometrics Journal, associate editor of SERIEs — The Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, and guest editor for Labour Economics, the Journal of the European Association of Labour Economists.
For further information, please contact business-seminar-series@glasgow.ac.uk.
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First published: 26 February 2025