Migrants and imports: Evidence from Dutch firms

Abstract This paper examines the effect of hiring migrants on firms' imports using a rich employer–employee dataset from the Netherlands for 2010–17. We use an instrumental variables strategy, and find that firms that employ migrants from a high‐income country are more likely to import from that country. Our benchmark specification indicates that a one standard deviation increase in the share of migrant workers from a certain country raises their employer's probability of importing from those workers' origin country by 6.6 percentage points, explaining half of the average probability of import... Mehr ...