National Conflict and High-Skilled Immigrants’ Workplace Efforts: Evidence from the U.S.–China Conflict

This paper shows that high-skilled immigrants strategically increase their workplace efforts in response to identity-based career concerns that intensify following national conflicts between their countries of origin and host countries. Leveraging the rapid escalation of the U.S.–China conflict following the 2016 U.S. presidential election in the difference-in-differences framework, we show that Chinese-descent inventors in the United States significantly increased their workplace efforts compared with their Korean- and Japanese-descent counterparts. Consistent with our theory, this effect is more pronounced among Chinese-descent inventors more vulnerable to identity-based career concerns, including midcareer migrants, those with ethnically distinctive first names, corporate inventors more dependent on immigration sponsorship than academic counterparts, and those residing in counties with higher levels of Trump support. Furthermore, using a nationally representative survey, we find that Chinese-descent college-educated workers in the United States reported working significantly more hours than their Korean and Japanese counterparts following the conflict. This study contributes to our understanding of how high-skilled immigrants adjust their workplace efforts in response to geopolitical tensions. © 2025, INFORMS.