Are Immigrants a Shot in the Arm for the Local Economy?

Abstract

All remaining errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

“…33 Other alternative explanations are likewise unsupported by the data: 1) Excluded braceros were not replaced by lawful but non-Mexican foreign workers: stocks of Jamaican, Bahamian, and other non-Mexican foreign seasonal agricultural workers barely rose after bracero exclusion. 34 2) It is unlikely that the labor-market e ects of bracero exclusion were o est by reduced labor demand due to the loss of local expenditures from bracero earnings, the e ect posited by Altonji and Card (1991) and tested by Hong and McLaren (2015), since braceros tended to live in isolated work-camps and spend only a small fraction of their earnings in the United States. 3) There is no evidence that substantial numbers of domestic seasonal farm workers moved between states to o set the loss of bracero labor supply, the e ect considered by Card and DiNardo (2000) and Hatton and Tani (2005), given the lack of response by domestic interstate migrants in Tables 3 and 5.…”

The Effect of Immigration on Business Dynamics and Employment

“…We see evidence of demand-side effects in our industry results, as discussed above, and this is consistent with prior research. Hong and McLaren (2015) find that immigrant inflows lead to spillover job creation, with each immigrant generating 1.2 jobs in the local labor market through this channel.…”

Remittances and the Wage Impact of Immigration

“…The empirical speci…cation is discussed in section 3 and the data and descriptive statistics are described in section 4. The results and 6 A new paper by Hong and McLaren (2013) also focuses on the labor supply and consumer demand e¤ects of immigration. However, Hong and McLaren (2013) are not able to separately identify these competing e¤ects and instead make inferences about their relative size based on the net impact of immigration.…”

“…The results and 6 A new paper by Hong and McLaren (2013) also focuses on the labor supply and consumer demand e¤ects of immigration. However, Hong and McLaren (2013) are not able to separately identify these competing e¤ects and instead make inferences about their relative size based on the net impact of immigration. As far as I know, this is the …rst paper to disentangle these competing e¤ects and examine how an immigrant-induced change in the consumer base a¤ects native wages.…”