Elisa Rodepeter 

Labor Blues: How Global Talent Is Distributed Among Young Firms

Skilled labor shortages are a pressing economic challenge for many advanced economies, and attracting high-skilled migrants has become a key policy response. This paper examines whether easing access to high-skilled migrant labor differentially affects firms depending on their founders’ migration background. Exploiting the introduction of the EU Blue Card in 2012 as a quasi-experimental policy shock, we analyze its impact on workforce composition and firm performance among young firms with and without non-EU migrant founders. We investigate how the EU Blue Card in 2012 affected the workforce of young firms with and without a migration background. Our results show that young firms with non-EU founders benefited disproportionally from the increased labor supply following the reform. The results point to the presence of labor market frictions, such as discrimination, language, and network barriers. We do not find evidence of migrant skilled workers crowding out native skilled workers.

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