2026 Theses Doctoral

Immigration Policy as Industrial Policy: Evidence from post-legalization occupational upgrading, heterogeneous fiscal impact, and ethnic innovation.

Di Martino Novo, Daniel A.

Immigration policy determines who enters a country and under which conditions, yet the economic consequences of selecting different immigrants remain insufficiently understood. How does immigration policy affect immigrant labor market outcomes, public finances, and the level and composition of innovation?

This dissertation investigates that question through three empirical chapters using Census and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent data. The methods employed include a difference-in-differences estimation exploiting the quasi-random eligibility nature of Temporary Protected Status, an immigrant legalization program, a descriptive fiscal simulation projecting immigrant tax payments, benefits, and descendant outcomes over 30 years, and a Bartik instrumental variable strategy leveraging the 1970 distribution of Indian immigrants to evaluate the impact of the rapid arrival of highly-educated Indian immigrants on innovation.

Three conclusions emerge. First, legal work authorization raises earnings primarily through occupational upgrading rather than within-job wage gains, especially among college-educated immigrants. Second, fiscal and economic impact varies enormously by immigrant characteristics and immigration policy can significantly change the national debt over the medium term. And third, high-skilled immigration raises innovation, with the strongest and most robust effects for Indian-origin inventors and suggestive evidence of broader spillovers, and the national-origin composition of immigration affects which sectors benefit the most from increased innovation.