Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your High-Skilled Labor: H-1B Lottery Outcomes and Entrepreneurial Success

Stephen G. Dimmock, Jiekun Huang, Scott J. Weisbenner

NBER Working Paper No. 26392
Issued in October 2019
NBER Program(s):Corporate Finance, Labor Studies, Public Economics, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

We study how access to high-skill labor affects the outcomes of start-up firms. We obtain exogenous variation in firms’ ability to access skilled labor by using win rates in H-1B visa lotteries. Relative to other firms that also applied for H-1B visas, firms with higher lottery win rates are more likely to receive additional venture capital funding and to have a successful exit via an IPO or acquisition. H-1B visa lottery winners also subsequently receive more patents and patent citations. Overall, our results show that access to high-skill labor is a critical determinant of success for start-up firms.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

A non-technical summary of this paper is available in the January 2020 NBER Digest.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Digest by email.

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w26392