This paper describes the theoretical underpinnings and provides empirical evidence for a model that predicts a positive impact of immigration on entrepreneurial activity. Immigrants, we hypothesize, facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. At...

An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills-based system, replacing family visas with employment-based visas. In many ways this is a false dichotomy:...

The labor market "quality" of immigrants is a subject of debate among immigration researchers, and a major public policy concern. However, traditional methods of measuring human capital are particularly difficult to apply to recently arrived immigrants. Many factors that have a negative effect...

The labor market "quality" of immigrants is a subject of debate among immigration researchers, and a major public policy concern. However, traditional methods of measuring human capital are particularly difficult to apply to recently arrived immigrants. Many factors that have a negative effect...

Using 1960-1990 census microdata, this paper presents two analyses that examine how the initial large differences in immigrant earnings by country of origin change with duration in the United States. The first analysis reveals that country of origin adds less to the explanation of earnings among...

Two issues have taken center stage in the recent debates about U.S. immigration policy: one, illegal immigration and more generally the entrance of poorly educated individuals into the U.S. economy and two, whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admissions system or move towards a...

Historical, longitudinal data are used to track the earnings of cohorts of immigrant and U.S.-born women over time. The longitudinal data circumvent potential cohort biases that afflict cross-sectional analyses of immigrant earnings growth and biases due to immigrant emigration and other issues...

We present a novel theory that immigrants facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. Immigrants whose human capital is not immediately transferable to the host country face lower opportunity costs of investing in new skills or methods and will...

We present a novel theory that immigrants facilitate innovation and entrepreneur-ship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. Immigrants whose human capitalis not immediately transferable to the host country face lower opportunity costs ofinvesting in new skills or methods and will be...