Combining unique individual level H-1B data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and data from the 2009 American Community Survey, we analyze earnings differences between H-1B visa holders and US born workers in STEM occupations. The data indicate that H-1Bs are younger and...

This paper analyzes differences in welfare transitions between natives and immigrants in Sweden using a large representative panel data set, LINDA, for the years 1991 to 2001. The data contains administrative information on welfare use, country of birth, and time of arrival in Sweden among other...

We examine the impact of state level legislation against the hiring of unauthorized immigrants on employment opportunities among competing low-skilled workers. Our focus is on the role of E-Verify mandates and specifically, we test for effects of the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on...

This paper analyzes transitions into and out of 3 different labor market states, social assistance, unemployment and employment. We estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model, controlling for endogenous initial condition and unobserved heterogeneity, using a large representative Swedish panel...

We utilize individual panel data from the 1996 and 2001 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to analyze the relative success of self-employed female Hispanics. To allow for a meaningful comparison of earnings between self-employed and wage/salary employed women, we generate...

Low-skilled workers do not fare well in today's skill intensive economy and their opportunities continue to diminish. Given that individuals in this challenging skill segment of the workforce are more likely to have poor experiences in the labor market, and hence incur greater public expenses,...

More than half of the foreign born workforce in the U.S. have no schooling beyond high school and about 20 percent of the low-skilled workforce are immigrants. More than 10 percent of these low-skilled immigrants are self-employed. Utilizing longitudinal data from the 1996, 2001 and 2004 Survey...

Taking advantage of the ability to identify immigrants who were unauthorized to work prior to obtaining Legal Permanent Resident status, we use the New Immigrant Survey to examine whether lacking legal status to work in the U.S. constrains employment outcomes of illegal immigrants. With the...

In this paper we develop a simple model of the signaling value of the GED credential. The model illustrates necessary assumptions for a difference-in-difference estimator, which uses a change in the GED passing standard, to yield unbiased estimates of the signaling value of the GED for marginal...

Small business lending programs designed to move disadvantaged low-income people into business ownership have been difficult to implement successfully in the US context. Based in part on the premise that financing requirements are an entry barrier limiting the ability of aspiring entrepreneurs...