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on Economics of Human Migration |
| By: | Alan Duncan (Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University); Mark N Harris (School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University); Astghik Mavisakalyan (Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre, Curtin University); Toan Nguyen (Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre, Curtin University) |
| Abstract: | This paper compares immigration flows in response to changes in labour market conditions to provide an assessment of Australia’s selective immigration policies. We find employer sponsored immigration varied in line with changes in regional wages, with immigrants being drawn to states with greater wage grown. In contrast, evidence does not support this trend for points-based immigrants. We account for the endogeneity bias by exploiting differences in the impact of exogenous commodity price fluctuations on regional wages. A complimentary analysis of a points-based immigration policy reform in 2012 further highlights the role of employers in alleviating the apparent misallocation of points-based immigrants. |
| Keywords: | skilled immigration, location choice, immigration policy |
| JEL: | J21 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ozl:bcecwp:wp1802&r=mig |
| By: | Gregory Verdugo (Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques); Sorana Toma (CREST-ENSAI) |
| Abstract: | Recent decades have seen a rapid increase in the share of non-European immigrants in public housing in Europe, which has led to concern regarding the rise of “ghettos” in large cities. Using French census data over three decades, we examine how this increase in public housing participation has affected segregation. While segregation levels have increased moderately on average, the number of immigrant enclaves has grown. The growth of enclaves is being driven by the large increase in non-European immigrants in the census tracts where the largest housing projects are located, both in the housing projects and the surrounding non-public dwellings. As a result, contemporary differences in segregation levels across metropolitan areas are being shaped by the concentration of public housing within cities, in particular the share of non-European immigrants in large housing projects constructed before the 1980s. Nevertheless, the overall effect of public housing on segregation has been ambiguous. While large projects have increased segregation, the inflows of non-European immigrants into small projects have brought many immigrants into census tracts where they have previously been rare and, thus, diminished segregation levels. |
| Keywords: | Housing; Europe; France; Immigration |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/31cfdhnp1f8asp29hjnqv33slt&r=mig |
| By: | Alexander M. Danzer; Carsten Feuerbaum; Marc Piopiunik; Ludger Woessmann |
| Abstract: | Does a high regional concentration of immigrants of the same ethnicity affect immigrant children’s acquisition of host-country language skills and educational attainment? We exploit the exogenous placement of guest workers from five ethnicities across German regions during the 1960s and 1970s in a model with region and ethnicity fixed effects. Our results indicate that exposure to a higher own-ethnic concentration impairs immigrant children’s host-country language proficiency and increases school dropout. A key mediating factor for this effect is parents’ lower speaking proficiency in the host-country language, whereas inter-ethnic contacts with natives and economic conditions do not play a role. |
| Keywords: | immigrant children, ethnic concentration, language, education, guest workers |
| JEL: | J15 I20 R23 J61 |
| Date: | 2018–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bav:wpaper:180_danzerfeuerbaumpiopiunikwoessmann&r=mig |
| By: | Marbach, Moritz (Stanford University and ETH Zurich); Hainmueller, Jens (Stanford University); Hangartner, Dominik (Stanford University and ETH Zurich) |
| Abstract: | Many European countries impose employment bans that prevent asylum seekers from entering the local labor market for a certain waiting period upon arrival. We provide evidence on the long-term effects of such employment bans on the subsequent economic integration of refugees. We leverage a natural experiment in Germany, where a court ruling prompted the reduction in the length of the employment ban. We find that even five years after the waiting period was reduced, employment rates were about 20 percentage points lower for refugees who, upon arrival, had to wait an additional seven months before they were allowed to enter the labor market. It took up to ten years for this employment gap to disappear. Our findings suggest that longer employment bans considerably slowed down the economic integration of refugees and reduced their motivation to integrate early on after arrival. A marginal cost-benefit analysis suggests that this employment ban cost German taxpayers about 40 million Euro per year on average in terms of welfare expenditures and forgone tax revenues from unemployed refugees. |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:stabus:repec:ecl:stabus:3618&r=mig |
| By: | Gouranga Gopal Das (Department of Economics, Hanyang University.); Sugata Marjit (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta(CSSSC).) |
| Abstract: | With the ensuing immigration reform in the US, the paper shows that targeted skilled immigration into the R&D sector that helps low-skilled labor is conducive for controlling inequality and raising wage. Skilled talent-led innovation could have spillover benefits for the unskilled sector while immigration into the production sector will always reduce wage, aggravating wage inequality. In essence, we infer: (i) if R&D inputs contributes only to skilled sector, wage inequality increases in general; (ii) for wage gap to decrease, R&D sector must produce inputs that goes into unskilled manufacturing sector; (iii) even with two types of specific R&D inputs entering into the skilled and unskilled sectors separately, unskilled labor is not always benefited by high skilled migrants into R&D-sector. Rather, it depends on the importance of migrants’ skill in R&D activities and intensity of inputs. Inclusive immigration policy requires inter-sectoral diffusion of ideas embedded in talented immigrants targeted for innovation. |
| Keywords: | H1B, Immigration, Innovation, Wage gap, Skill, R&D, Policy, RAISE Act |
| JEL: | F22 J31 O15 |
| Date: | 2018–05–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qld:uq2004:594&r=mig |
| By: | Anna Maria Mayda; Giovanni Peri; Walter Steingress |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote for the Republican Party by analyzing county-level data on election outcomes between 1990 and 2010. Our main contribution is to separate the effect of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants, by exploiting the different geography and timing of the inflows of these two groups of immigrants. We find that an increase in the first type of immigrants decreases the share of the Republican vote, while an inflow of the second type increases it. These effects are mainly due to the local impact of immigrants on votes of U.S. citizens and they seem independent of the country of origin of immigrants. We also find that the pro-Republican impact of low-skilled immigrants is stronger in low-skilled and non-urban counties. This is consistent with citizens' political preferences shifting towards the Republican Party in places where low-skilled immigrants are more likely to be perceived as competition in the labor market and for public resources. |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24510&r=mig |
| By: | Carlo Ciccarelli (DEF & CEIS,University of Rome "Tor Vergata"); Alberto Dalmazzo (University of Siena,); Daniela Vuri (DEF & CEIS,University of Rome "Tor Vergata") |
| Abstract: | Protectionist policies are often considered or even implemented as a reaction to increasing globalization. This is not new in history. This paper uses the introduction of import duties on sugar in the late nineteenth century Italy to measure the impact of protectionism on migration out flows at the time of the first globalization. Both for climate reasons and the nature of the soil, the cultivation and processing of sugar beets was geographically concentrated in a small area, leading de facto to a regional protectionist policy. Our theoretical model illustrates how a tariff that favours local producers may affect residents' incentives to migrate abroad. The predictions of the model are tested with the synthetic control method which uses the variation in sugar cultivation across areas to estimate the effect of interest. Our results show that protectionism effectively reduced the relative incentive to migrate away from sugar-producing areas. |
| Keywords: | protectionism, regional economics, migrations, 19th century Italy. |
| JEL: | N93 J4 C23 |
| Date: | 2018–06–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:437&r=mig |