Léa MARCHAL, Guzmán OURENS, Giulia SABBADINI
When Immigrants Meet Exporters: A Reassessment of the Migrant-Native Wage Gap ~ R&R requested by The European Economic Review
We show that high-skilled immigrants earn higher wages than comparable natives in exporting firms, while low-skilled immigrants do not. Using matched employer–employee and customs data from Portugal, we document a reversal of the migrant-native wage gap among high-skilled workers in exporting firms. We develop a model with heterogeneous firms and directed search, in which high-skilled immigrants lower export costs through destination-specific knowledge. The model yields an information premium that explains the wage gap reversal. We provide evidence consistent with this mechanism using information on the origin country of the workers and the destination country of the firm’s exports. Our results identify a novel channel through which trade reduces wage inequality conditional on the skill level and origin country of the employees, and provide new micro-level evidence on the role of workers in shaping firm-level internationalisation.
DICE Discussion Paper (2025)
CES Working Paper (2023) (version of the paper with French data)
Léa MARCHAL, Claire NAIDITCH, Giulia SABBADINI, Martin VALDEZ
Foreign Workers and the Choice of Export Mode
This paper studies the impact of skilled foreign workers on firms’ export modes. We build a model featuring heterogeneous firms, incorporating trade intermediaries and foreign workers, and analyse how these workers influence firms’ decisions to export directly, indirectly, or not at all. We find that foreign workers help firms overcome productivity constraints for both direct and indirect exports. This pro-trade effect is larger for low-productivity firms engaged in indirect exporting. Using detailed customs and employer-employee data from Portugal and an instrumentation strategy, we find evidence supporting the pro-trade effect of skilled foreign workers, along with their asymmetric impact across firms of different sizes. Our results indicate that the positive effect of foreign workers on exports has been underestimated until now, as indirect exporting has never been explored in this context.
Paper available soon. ETSG 2025 slides
Farida ABDELSALAM, Léa MARCHAL, Frauke STEGLICH
How Due Diligence Shapes Firms’ Imports
Mandatory due diligence laws are increasingly used to regulate global value chains. This paper examines how such regulations affect firms’ import decisions, using France’s 2018 Duty of Vigilance Law. The law requires large firms to identify, prevent, and mitigate harms throughout their supply chains. We combine French administrative data with a measure of human rights based on the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Our identification strategy exploits variation in firms’ pre‑law exposure to human‑rights risks. Our results indicate that covered firms at risk were already reducing imports from high‑risk markets prior to the law, and this trend continues after its implementation. This suggests that the Duty of Vigilance Law did not measurably affect sourcing patterns and that observed declines reflect pre‑existing adjustments rather than the regulation itself. We also find evidence that the change in sourcing patterns is accompanied by trade diversion from high-risk suppliers.
Draft available upon request.