Patt, AlexanderRuhose, JensWiederhold, SimonFlores, Miguel2020-12-162017-06Patt, Alexander, Jens Ruhose, Simon Wiederhold, and Miguel Flores. “International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills.” CID Research Fellow and Graduate Student Working Paper Series 2017.84, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, June 2017.https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37366605We present the first evidence that international emigrant selection on education and earnings materializes through occupational skills. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have higher manual skills and lower cognitive skills than non-migrants. Conditional on occupational skills, education and earnings no longer predict migration decisions. Differential labor-market returns to occupational skills explain the observed selection pattern and significantly outperform previously used returns-to-skills measures in predicting migration. Results are persistent over time and hold within narrowly defined regional, sectoral, and occupational labor markets.en-USResearch Paper or Report2020-12-16