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.

Recommended citation: Valencia, C. (2026). Visa Regulations, Agricultural Employment, and Productivity.
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Can a Soft Skill Signal Mitigate Hiring Discrimination? Evidence from Malaysia

with Sarah Janzen, Yashodhan Ghorpade and Amanina Abdur Rahman (Submitted)

Hiring discrimination remains widespread, raising the question of how disadvantaged workers can improve their labor-market outcomes. Using a correspondence study in Malaysia, we test whether employers value two soft skills, leadership and teamwork, and whether signaling them mitigates discrimination. Applications with Malay and Indian names are 11–14 percentage points less likely to be contacted than those with Chinese names; we find no gender-based discrimination. Signaling teamwork reduces ethnic discrimination by 34–43%, while leadership has no effect. We develop a model using skill signals to distinguish taste-based from statistical discrimination. Our results indicate soft skills can counteract statistical discrimination.

Recommended citation: Valencia, C., Janzen, S., Ghorpade, Y., & Rahman, A. (2026). Can a Soft Skill Signal Mitigate Hiring Discrimination? Evidence from Malaysia.
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Peer pressure: Experimental Evidence from Restroom Behavior (with B. Cardinale Lagomarsino, M. Gutman, L. Freira, M. Lanzalot, M. Lauletta, L. Malchik, F. Montaño Campos, B. Pacini, and M. Rossi). Economic Inquiry, 55(3), 2017.
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• Diversity in Academia (with Anjali Adukia, Elisa Xi Chen, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, and Marieke Kleemans)

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

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

• Access to Agricultural Workers and Crop Insurance