No abstract

The cost of international trade matters. As traditional barriers to trade continue to diminish in importance, additional ways to lower trade costs become increasingly important to promoting international trade. Migrants can help lower trade costs between their country of birth and their country of residence by providing an information channel that reduces friction and facilitates trade relations. This paper applies a gravity model to a large set of data about developed and developing countries to estimate the extent of the relationship between migrants and trade. The results suggest that both immigrants and emigrants are significantly related to higher trade volumes. Immigrants seem to be especially good at facilitating trade in differentiated goods, for which information costs are particularly important.

This paper takes as its point of departure the unique position recently adopted by Swedish policymakers emphasising migration as a tool to increase trade. We attempt to empirically scrutinise this position. Our results demonstrate that migrants stimulate exports, especially along the extensive product margin of trade and for differentiated products, but have no significant impact on imports. This finding suggests that for small open economies where numerous immigrants are refugees, the strategy of using migration to facilitate trade may only be effective with respect to exports. This paper also contributes to the literature on trade and migration by exploiting data on gender and age, which allow us to draw inferences on the underlying impact channels. We adopt an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity issue due to potential reverse causality. The pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that migration primarily reduces fixed trade costs resulting from information and trust friction across migrant host and source countries. Importantly, the results imply that policymakers may be able to promote trade by improving immigrants’ labour market integration instead of simply being restricted to promoting more liberal immigration policies, which is generally more controversial.

Foreign born people are uniquely qualified to stimulate trade between their present country of residence and the country in which they were born. This study provides an empirical investigation of the link between migration and trade flows for Sweden. Trade and migration data for Sweden and 180 partner countries between 2002 and 2007 are used to estimate an augmented gravity model. The results show a statistically strong, positive and robust link between migration and increased trade flows. The analysis derives the effect from the ability of foreignborn people to improve the flow of information between Sweden and their former home countries. This study argues, in light of the findings, that immigration can be used as an instrument for increased foreign trade and that the issue of migration thus deserves increased focus in trade policy and economic policy.• JEL Classification: F10, F22, F14•

Protectionism and anti-globalization tides have been rising already before the COVID-19 pandemic, with Brexit and the China-U.S. trade war, as two examples. A continued disruption to global trade, investment and value chains could worsen global development. Economic recovery will require restoring firms' ability to trade, offshore and invest globally. To achieve this, it will be useful to understand the role of migration for foreign trade, investment and other aspects of internationalization. In this paper we review and discuss over 100 papers published about migrants' roles on international trade, foreign direct investment and offshoring. Although the evidence suggests that migration facilitates trade and internationalization, we also note substantial gaps and inconsistencies in the existing literature. The aim of this paper is to encourage further research and assist policymakers in their efforts to promote economic recovery including internationalization.