Some immigrants try to keep their ethnicity hidden while others become ever deeply more mired in their home culture. We argue that among immigrants this struggle manifests itself in the ethnic goods they choose to consume. Different types of ethnic goods have vastly different effects on...

This paper documents where immigrants who enter the U.S. with different types of visas ("green cards") choose to live initially and what determines those location choices. Using population data on immigrants from the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1971 to 2000, matched to data on...

We measure the extent to which skilled immigrants increase innovation in the United States by exploring individual patenting behavior as well as state-level determinants of patenting. The 2003 National Survey of College Graduates shows that immigrants patent at double the native rate, and that...

This paper examines whether the results of the earnings equation developed in the overeducation/required eduation/under-education (ORU) literature are sensitive to whether the usual or reference levels of education are measured using the Realized Matches or Worker Self-Assessment methods. The...

This paper examines the difference between the payoffs to schooling for immigrants and the native born in Canada, using 2001 Census data. Analyses are presented for males and females. Comparisons are offered with findings for the US. The paper uses the Overeducation/Required...

We estimate the impact of immigration on the wages of natives in Ireland applying the technique proposed by Borjas (2003). Under this method, the labour market is divided into a number of skill cells, where the cells are defined by groups with similar levels of experience and education (or...

"This paper analyzes the effect on earnings of the matching of English language skills to occupational requirements. It uses data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database and a "Realized Matches" procedure to quantify expected levels of English skills in each of over 500...

In this paper we show that highly skilled undocumented migrants are more likely to return home than migrants with low or no skills when illegality causes skill wasteʺ, i.e. when illegality reduces the rate of return of individual capabilities (i.e. skills and human capital) in both the labor...

The paper analyses the problem of a "skills shortage" in Australia. It begins with an analysis of the operation of a labour market in terms of stocks and flows of labour services and human capital acquisition. It discusses the definition of a skills shortage, why it persists, and then looks at...

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...