Firms with higher H-1B visa lottery win rates are more likely to receive additional venture capital funding, to have a successful exit via an IPO or acquisition, & to receive more patents & patent citations

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your High-Skilled Labor: H-1B Lottery Outcomes and Entrepreneurial Success. Stephen G. Dimmock, Jiekun Huang, Scott J. Weisbenner. NBER Working Paper No. 26392, October 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26392

Abstract: We study how access to high-skill labor affects the outcomes of start-up firms. We obtain exogenous variation in firms’ ability to access skilled labor by using win rates in H-1B visa lotteries. Relative to other firms that also applied for H-1B visas, firms with higher lottery win rates are more likely to receive additional venture capital funding and to have a successful exit via an IPO or acquisition. H-1B visa lottery winners also subsequently receive more patents and patent citations. Overall, our results show that access to high-skill labor is a critical determinant of success for start-up firms.