Nottingham Centre for Research on
Globalisation and Economic Policy (GEP)

GEP Research Paper 04/04

Immigration and Native Welfare

Gabriel J. Felbermayr and Wilhelm Kohler

Abstract

We unify two approaches towards identifying native welfare effects of immigration, one emphasizing the immigration surplus (Borjas, 1995,1999), the other identifying a welfare loss due to terms-of-trade effects (Davis & Weinstein, 2002). We decompose the native welfare effect of immigration into the standard complementarity effect, augmented by a Stolper-Samuelson effect, and a terms-of-trade effect. Using a structural model with three skill-classes we derive propositions on the wage and native welfare effects of various immigration scenarios. A calibration-based simulation reveals that the size of the inflow and immigrant income repatriation are key determinants of the welfare-ranking of different immigration scenarios.

Issued in February 2004.

This paper is available in PDF format .

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