Graduation Year

2025

Date of Submission

4-2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

William F. Lincoln

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© 2025 Xinyue Zhang

Abstract

This thesis examines how firm-level access to high-skilled immigrant labor, measured through H-1B visa petitions and approvals, affects innovation in artificial intelligence (AI). Using a panel dataset linking firm-year H-1B filings from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Employer Data Hub to AI patent records from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) between 2009 and 2019, the analysis estimates fixed effects regressions predicting AI patenting activity. The results show that H-1B approvals are positively and significantly associated with future AI patent counts, while petitions alone are not. Alternative specifications using inverse hyperbolic sine transformations and changes in patent counts further validate the main findings. These results highlight the critical role of realized foreign talent in driving firm-level innovation and underscore the innovation constraints imposed by current U.S. visa policy.

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