By measuring the earnings growth of immigrant cohorts across the 1960-1980 censuses, we test two potential hypotheses for the decline in the education-adjusted entry earnings of immigrants. One hypothesis suggests that the decline has been caused by the immigration of lower ability immigrants: a...

Cross-sectional estimates of immigrant wage growth have painted an optimistic picture of the ability of immigrants to adapt to the U.S. labor market in that studies using cross-sectional data have generally found immigrant wage growth to exceed that of the native born. This optimistic picture of...

There has been an ongoing concern about the productivity of kinship-based immigrants in the U.S. labor market. Despite the policy importance of this issue, little empirical or theoretical attention has been devoted to learning the effect of different admission criteria on immigrants' economic...

Fueling debates about the "quality" of immigrants from economically developing countries, empirical studies based on a well-respected methodology conclude that post-1965 immigrant men have low initial earnings and sluggish earnings growth. This methodology is based on flawed assumptions (Duleep,...

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...

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...

This paper presents and tests a model that may partially explain why the demand for labor adapts to the availability of labor. In particular, I postulate that the cost of hiring declines with increases in the amount of labor available. The cost of hiring would decrease with a growth in available...

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...

The importance of using natural experiments in economic research has long been recognized. Yet, it is only in recent years that natural experiments have become an integral part of the economist's analytical toolbox, thanks to the efforts of Meyer, Card, Peters, Krueger, Gruber, and others. This...

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...