Titelaufnahme

This paper investigates the impact of Chinese import competition on firms' performance, and whether firms employing immigrant workers face this shock differently. Using a sample of French manufacturing firms from 1994 to 2015 and an IV-2SLS strategy relying on a shift-share instrument, we find that an increase in Chinese import competition faced by firms on an industry-destination market has a negative effect on both firms' survival probability and sales growth rate on that market. At both margins, the effect is mitigated by the employment of immigrant workers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates whether firms' immigrant employment helps to understand firms' heterogeneous responses to trade shocks.