This paper investigates the export‐enhancing effect of immigrant workers and how this effect varies across occupations. We use a dataset made of French manufacturing firms from 1997 to 2009 and address the problem of endogenous employment choice using an instrumental variable‐two‐stage least squares (IV‐2SLS) strategy and a doubly robust estimator. Our results show that immigrants in both low‐ and high‐skilled occupations foster exports at both the intensive and the extensive margins. In addition, we show that this effect is spread across all export destinations.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This article focuses on an apparent conflict between the standard trade theory and available empirical evidence on factor flows. Theoretically, labor and capital flows must be substitutes. However, empirical papers find migration and FDI to be either substitutes or complements, depending upon the skill content of migration. To reconcile the standard theory with these empirical results, we develop a two-country general equilibrium model. We consider three factors -capital, unskilled and skilled labor -and two internationally traded goods. Countries only differ in their factor endowments. The first country is a developing country amply endowed with unskilled labor; the second one is a developed country well endowed with skilled labor. Under imperfect factor mobility, we find that capital and unskilled labor flows are substitutes, while capital and skilled labor flows are complements. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

This article investigates the determinants of the employment of foreign skilled workers by firms operating in Sub-Saharan African countries. We use cross section firm-level data on a large sample of foreign and domestic firms collected through the Africa Investor Survey 2010 by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. We find evidence of a strong complementarity between foreign capital inflows and the employment of foreign skilled workers. Our results also indicate that interventions in improving the working regulation and skilled workers immigration regimes may stimulate foreign skilled workers transfer by firms, and thereby foreign direct investments.

We provide a theoretical framework to analyze how financial constraints hinder migration. Introducing wealth heterogeneity and borrowing constraints into a random utility maximization model of migration, we find evidence of multilateral resistance to migration stemming from borrowing constraints. We calibrate the model on 22 European countries, and we show that omitting the constraints biases upward the estimation of bilateral migration rates. We then simulate an increase in the bilateral cost of migration to the United Kingdom. We find that omitting the constraints biases downward the change entailed by the cost increase in the bilateral rates of migration to all destinations.