Skilled Labor Mobility and Firm Value: Evidence from Green Card Allocations

This paper studies how the labor market frictions of skilled workers affect corporate valuation. The analysis features immigrant workers’ mobility constraints imposed by the U.S. green card application process and exploits exogenous variations caused by imperfections in the current immigration system. The study finds that relaxing mobility constraints negatively influences firm value. This effect is stronger for firms with higher labor adjustment costs. Reductions in investments and increases in labor costs are channels through which labor mobility adversely affects firm value. The findings suggest that monopoly rent over skilled workers is an important economic determinant of corporate valuation.

Pro-Labor Institutions and Corporate Employment Efficiency

We examine how labor-friendly institutional features (i.e., laborism) relate to corporate investment efficiency in labor in a sample of firms from 33 countries over 1996–2012. We consider three dimensions of laborism—the presence of a left-leaning government, rigidity of employee protection laws, and collectivist culture. Our evidence shows that firms operating in stronger laborism countries make less efficient labor investment decisions, which is consistent with higher labor adjustment costs associated with laborism.

Labor Adjustment Costs and Risk Management

This paper studies the effects of labor adjustment costs on corporate risk management. Labor adjustment costs attenuate the correlation between the internal funds of a firm and its investment opportunity, and create more incentives for the firm to smooth internal funds. Using a state border discontinuity approach, I find that state-level labor protection laws significantly impact a firm’s use of foreign currency derivative contracts. I further find that a firm holds more cash when labor adjustment costs are larger, and such an effect concentrates on firms that do not engage in derivative hedging.