Does employing undocumented workers give firms a competitive advantage?

摘要

Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper finds that, on average, across all firms, employing undocumented workers reduces a firmu2019s hazard of exit by 19 percent. The advantage to firms from employing undocumented workers increases as more firms in the industry do so, decreases with the skill level of the firmu2019s workers, increases with the breadth of a firmu2019s market, and increases with the labor intensity of the firmu2019s production process.