Research

Visa Regulations, Agricultural Employment, and Productivity

The H-2A visa program provides US farms access to foreign seasonal labor but requires employers to pay a federally mandated minimum hourly wage, the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, to both foreign and domestic workers performing comparable tasks. This paper studies how increases in the H-2A visa wage affect farms’ allocation of agricultural inputs. Using county-level data from the 2002–2022 USDA Census of Agriculture and a border-county pair design that compares counties across state lines, I show that higher visa wages lead farms to substitute away from labor and toward capital and materials. I find that a 1% increase in the visa wage on average leads to a 1.2% increase in machinery values, increases intermediate input use by 3.9% on the intensive margin, and expands the range of inputs used by 1.1% on the extensive margin. I find no effect on employment or payrolls. The results are consistent with labor-cost-driven mechanization and input intensification, which together contribute to higher agricultural productivity.

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Soft Skills and Hiring Discrimination

with Sarah Janzen, Yashodhan Ghorpade and Amanina Abdur Rahman

Hiring discrimination remains widespread in labor markets, raising questions about what workers can do to improve their chances of being considered for jobs in such settings. This paper examines whether soft skills are valued by employers and whether they can help mitigate discrimination. Using a correspondence study in Malaysia, we test the effects of signaling two soft skills: leadership and teamwork. We find that Malay and Indian sounding names are 11 and 14 percentage points less likely to be contacted, compared to Chinese sounding names. Soft skills are not explicitly demanded by employers, but signaling teamwork skills significantly reduces the discrimination gap in 43% and 33% for Malay and Indian candidates. We present a model that uses the soft skill signal to disentangle if the nature of discrimination is statistical or taste-based. Our results are consistent with statistical discrimination and highlight the potential of soft skills as a strategic signal to counteract hiring discrimination.

Recommended citation: Valencia, C., Janzen, S., Ghorpade, Y., & Rahman, A. (2024). Soft Skills, Competition, and Hiring Discrimination.
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• Diversity in Academia (with Anjali Adukia, Elisa Xi Chen, Marieke Kleemans and Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman

• From Metro Lines to Market Values: A Case Study of Rail Expansion and Land Prices in Buenos Aires (with Gustavo Nino)

• How Do Land Use and Crop Choices Respond to Labor Costs? (with Samyam Shrestha)