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Abstract

This thesis consists of three essays on how international trade and labour migration interact and shape economic outcomes for domestic firms and workers. My single-authored chapter studies export quality as a channel through which immigrant workers affect firm-level export prices and markups. Thanks to a better knowledge of the upstream market, immigrant workers help firms overcome informational barriers to sourcing inputs of higher quality from abroad. My second co-authored chapter investigates whether firms employing immigrant workers are more resilient in their export markets to an increase in competition from a low-wage country such as China. The study finds that an increase in the growth rate of Chinese imports in a market has a negative effect on firms resilience on that market, and that this negative effect is mitigated by the employment of immigrant workers. My third co-authored chapter studies theoretically and empirically whether the wage gap between native and immigrant workers varies with the export activity of the firm and the occupation of the worker. While the wage gap does not vary with the export intensity of firms for blue-collar immigrant workers, it reduces in favour of immigrant workers in white-collar positions when employed in firms with high export intensity, since white-collar immigrant workers capture an informational rent.

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