RETHINKING THE EFFECT OF IMMIGRATION ON WAGES

By Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, Giovanni Peri. World Scientific Studies in International Economics, 2012

1,355 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper asks the following question: what was the effect of surging immigration on average and individual wages of U.S.-born workers during the period 1990-2004? We emphasize the need for a general equilibrium approach to analyze this problem. The impact of immigrants on wages of U.S.-born workers can be evaluated only by accounting carefully for labor market and capital market interactions in production. Using such a general equilibrium approach we estimate that immigrants are imperfect substitutes for U.S.- born workers within the same education-experience-gender group (because they choose different occupations and have different skills). Moreover, accounting for a reasonable speed of adjustment of physical capital we show that most of the wage effects of immigration accrue to native workers within a decade. These two facts imply a positive and significant effect of the 1990-2004 immigration on the average wage of U.S.-born workers overall, both in the short run and in the long run. This positive effect results from averaging a positive effect on wages of U.S.-born workers with at least a high school degree and a small negative effect on wages of U.S.-born workers with no high school degree.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8bf36b36fa25755449456f2b59720583a68412db

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Citations in the corpus

Why Has Urban Inequality Increased? (2018, background): “Dustmann et al. (2013) and Ottaviano & Peri (2012) provide evidence that immigrants and natives are likely not perfect substitutes and this is why immigration increases native wages in some parts of the wage distribution.”
Skilled migration and innovation in European industries (2019, background): “A second set of explanations focuses on the impact of ethnical diversity on innovation (e.g. Ottaviano and Peri 2012; Østergaard et al. 2011; Ozgen et al. 2012; Nathan and Lee, 2013; Parrotta et al. 2014; Nathan, 2015).”
The Impact of Immigration on the Well-Being of Natives (2014, background): “Traditionally, studies analysing the impact of migration on natives have employed “objective” measures of welfare such as wages and employment (Borjas, 1994, 2003; Card, 1990, 2001; Butcher and Card, 1991; Dustmann et al., 2005; Ottaviano and Peri, 2012).”
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE LABOR MARKET EFFECTS OF A REFUGEE WAVE: APPLYING THE SYNTHETIC CONTROL METHOD TO THE MARIEL BOATLIFT (2015, critical): “Second, Borjas reduces the age range to 25-59 omitting another fourth of the labor force either young (16-24) or older (60-61).”
Skilled Immigration and the Employment Structures of US Firms (2014, neutral): “[58] Ottaviano, Gianmarco, and Giovanni Peri, "Rethinking the Effect of Immigration on Wages", Journal of the European Economic Association 10:1 (2012), 152-197.”
Multilateral Resistance to Migration (2013, neutral): “…by reverse causality: Mishra (2007) and Docquier, Ozden, and Peri (2010) show how wages at origin respond to migration whereas Borjas (2003) and Ottaviano and Peri (2012) among many others show how wages at destination respond to migration, and Bugamelli and Paternó (2009) analyze the…”
IMMIGRATION AND WAGES: EVIDENCE FROM CONSTRUCTION * (2012, positive): “As in Ottaviano and Peri (2012), we write the composite labour input as a CES combination of native (Njt) and immigrant (Mjt) labour,”
Immigration and Wage Dynamics: Evidence from the Mexican Peso Crisis (2020, methodology): “0 357 Mexican Inflows (Passel et al. (2012) estimates) 9,327.”