Agenda

30 Apr 2025 12:30

Migration, diversity and productivity in UK firms

San Giobbe - Aula Saraceno

This event is part of VSM Lectures, a series of seminars by top scholars from renowned international universities and institutions. Invited speakers present their recent studies, share key findings, and explore the impact of their research on the challenges currently faced by society and organizations.

Migration, diversity and productivity in UK firms

VSM lecture held by Max Nathan, Professor of Economic Geography at CASA, University College London

The event will also be available online via Gmeet

Abstract: 

We look at the effects of skilled migrants and migrant diversity on firm productivity, using a novel worker-firmdataset – leveraging millions of online profiles – to identify impacts and mechanisms. In theory, migration can boostfirms’ productivity through improving human capital, facilitating task specialisation or via diverse teams’ role in ideas generation. Urban location may amplify these effects. A growing body of evidence finds support for these mechanisms, and overall migration-productivity effects,
although effect sizes vary considerably across countries, industries and workflows. Two major challenges here are the lack of employer-employee datasets in many countries, and limitations in coverage / dimensionality in those that do exist. Data from online platforms and the web may help meet these challenges. We link over 3m individual education/ career histories from the Diffbot knowledge graph to the UK company register, alongside financial data from Orbis Historical, 2007-2024. In extensions we explore relative contributions of seniority, migrant human capital, task specialisation and migrant diversity.

Language

The event will be held in English

Organized by

Venice School of Management

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