economic dynamics in the malthusian era evidence from the 1609 spanish expulsion of the moriscos we investigate economic dynamics in the malthusian era using the 1609 expulsion of moriscos from spain sharp population declines in former morisco districts were accompanied by decreased output and increased per capita output while these short run results are consistent with standard malthusian predictions malthusian convergence was delayed up to 1786 in former morisco districts archival sources and historical accounts suggest extractive institutions and cultural differences may have contributed to delayed convergence in population and output per capita this historic episode provides an unusually rich setting to examine malthusian dynamics highlighting the potential for sustained differences in per capita output in the malthusian era

the impact of immigration comparing two global eras summary this paper asks whether history can inform modern debate about immigration s impact on high wage economies it examines the relationship between migration s labor market impact and capital flows before 1914 the first global era it then assesses the effects of immigration on wages and employment with and without international capital mobility today in the second global era it then explores the links between these economic relationships welfare burdens and immigration policy it concludes with an explanation for the apparent difference in immigration s impact in the two global eras and thus on policy

spatial competition with free entry chamberlinian tangencies and social efficiency abstract free entry in loschian spatial competition leads to a tangency between each firm s negatively sloped average revenue and the downsloping portion of average costs as in chamberlin s monopolistic competition it is generally concluded that this equilibrium involves too many inefficiently small firms however this conclusion is incorrect the difference between price and firm marginal production costs in spatial equilibrium is just sufficient to cover the additional marginal cost of output resulting from availability of multiple locations this chamberlinian tangency does not imply inefficiency because it does not include all the social costs and benefits resulting from spatial competition

three million foreigners three million unemployed immigration flows and the labour market in france this paper investigates the effect of the flows of immigrant workers on the french labour market from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s using a system of equations for unemployment labour force participation the real wage and the immigration rate it is shown that in the long run both legal and amnestied immigrant workers and immigrant families lower the unemployment rate permanently in the short run the arrival of immigrants increases unemployment slightly with an impact effect similar to that of an increase in domestic labour force participation the composition of immigration flows matters and the results indicate that the distribution between workers from the european union and other regions of the world also more skilled and less skilled workers should remain balanced

the impact of the 1962 repatriates from algeria on the french labor market this paper uses census data to examine the impact on the french labor market of the 900 000 people repatriated from algeria in 1962 repatriates settled in regions culturally and climatically simil

skilled immigration and the employment structures of u s firms we study the impact of skilled immigrants on the employment structures of us firms using matched employer employee data unlike most previous work we use the firm as the lens of analysis to account for greater heterogeneity and the fact that many skilled immigrant admissions are driven by firms themselves e g the h 1b visa ols and iv specifications show rising overall employment of skilled workers with increased skilled immigrant employment by the firm employment expansion is greater for young natives than for their older counterparts the departure rates for older workers relative to younger workers appear highest for those in stem occupations

the effect of immigration on unskilled native workers evidence from a natural experiment this study exploits the natural experiment provided by the start of the second intifada to measure the effect of immigration on the wage and employment of unskilled native workers it finds that immigration has no effect on the wage or employment of unskilled jewish workers the wage and employment of the least skilled israeli arab workers with zero to five years of schooling are adversely affected by immigration the slightly more skilled arab workers with six to 11 years of schooling in contrast are positively affected by immigration suggesting a complementarity effect with this group different explanations are proposed

winners and losers among a refugee hosting population abstractthe impact of a sudden mass influx of forced migrants on the hosting economy is understudied and not well understood using a household panel data set for the kagera region in tanzania we test the impact of the mass refugee presence on the welfare of the local population our identification strategy exploits variations in the timing of arrival as well as the spatial distribution of rwandese and burundi refugees we find a positive and aggregate effect but households are affected differently depending on their main initial occupation

how to measure labour market effects of immigration a review abstract this paper surveys available empirical evidence on labour market effects of immigration many different approaches have been used already to try to find out whether immigration hurts the labour market opportunities of natives no doubt new approaches will follow in the future as globalization will keep the migration issue on the agenda this literature review discusses the different approaches concentrating on both the methodology and the results at the end it tries to summarize available evidence

the labor market consequences of refugee supply shocks summarythe continuing inflow of hundreds of thousands of refugees into many european countries has ignited much political controversy and raised questions that require a fuller understanding of the determinants and consequences of refugee supply shocks this paper revisits four historical refugee shocks to document their labour market impact specifically we examine the influx of marielitos into miami in 1980 the influx of french repatriates and algerian nationals into france at the end of the algerian independence war in 1962 the influx of jewish emigres into israel after the collapse of the soviet union in the early 1990s and the exodus of refugees from the former yugoslavia during the long series of balkan wars between 1991 and 2001 we use a common empirical approach derived from factor demand theory and publicly available data to measure the impact of these shocks despite the differences in the political forces that motivated the various flows and in economic conditions across receiving countries the evidence reveals a common thread that confirms key insights of the canonical model of a competitive labour market exogenous supply shocks adversely affect the labour market opportunities of competing natives in the receiving countries and often have a favorable impact on complementary workers in short refugee flows can have large distributional consequences

the effect of mass influx on labor markets portuguese 1974 evidence revisited abstract this paper provides a reappraisal of the evidence from the influx that has been unique in the recent european history the flood of half a million returnees from mozambique and angola to portugal in the mid 1970s the objective of this paper is to study the impacts of a large supply shock on aggregate labor productivity wages and unemployment in contrast to the previous evidence the synthetic control analyses find that the influx had a significant adverse effect on labor market outcomes the results suggest that the portuguese labor market responded precisely the same way as the standard textbook model predicts an increase in the number of workers lowered average labor productivity and wages

international labor economics i argue for increased reliance on non u s data and policy evaluations to understand basic labor market parameters and to predict the effects of changes in u s labor market policies foreign experiences generate exogenous shocks to labor costs that create unusual opportunities to measure impacts on labor demand foreign policies often provide more variation in the underlying parameters in systems that are often structured like their american counterparts foreign data sets are often larger and better suited to inferring behavior an empirical examination shows the effect of author s location data set and journal on the research s subsequent impact

hierarchy versus inertial cooperation it is somewhat embarrassing for an economist and economic historian with the usual strong sense of turf and a need to be identified with his own to find his name cropping up from time to time in the foreign field of political science true the conclusion of my book on the depression borrowed the concept of leadership from political scientists norman frohlich and joe a oppenheimer who put forth the notion that public goods would be underproduced because of free riders unless a leader agreed to bear a disproportionate share of their costs my conclusion stated that the 1929 depression was so wide so deep and so long because no leading country was able and willing to discharge the role of a stabilizer the united kingdom could not the united states with or without the help of france would not 2 the responsibilities of a stabilizer as i originally detailed them were to furnish an outlet for distress goods or in periods of acute shortage to share its supplies with highly dependent countries to maintain the flow of capital to would be borrowers and to serve as a lender of last resort in financial crisis 3 since that book appeared in 1973 i have added two other responsibilities to the role of a would be stabilizer of the world economy to maintain a structure of exchange rates and to coordinate macroeconomic policies 4 political science has now transmuted the concept of leadership into hegemony a word that makes me uncomfortable because of its overtones of force threat pressure i think it is possible to lead without arm twisting

the impact of immigration why do studies reach such different results we classify the empirical literature on the wage impact of immigration into three groups where studies in the first two groups estimate different relative effects and studies in the third group estimate the total effect of immigration on wages we interpret the estimates obtained from the different approaches through the lens of the canonical model to demonstrate that they are not comparable we then relax two key assumptions in this literature allowing for inelastic and heterogeneous labor supply elasticities of natives and the downgrading of immigrants downgrading occurs when the position of immigrants in the labor market is systematically lower than the position of natives with the same observed education and experience levels downgrading means that immigrants receive lower returns to the same measured skills than natives when these skills are acquired in their country of origin we show that heterogeneous labor supply elasticities if ignored may complicate the interpretation of wage estimates and particularly the interpretation of relative wage effects moreover downgrading may lead to biased estimates in those approaches that estimate relative effects of immigration but not in approaches that estimate total effects we conclude that empirical models that estimate total effects not only answer important policy questions but are also more robust to alternative assumptions than models that estimate relative effects

the dynamic impact of immigration on natives labor market outcomes evidence from israel abstract this paper studies the short and medium run impact of highly skilled immigrants from the former soviet union to israel on natives wages and employment if immigrants are relatively good substitutes for native workers the impact of immigration will be largest immediately upon the immigrants arrival and may become smaller as the labor market adjusts to the supply shock conversely if immigrants upon arrival are poor substitutes for natives the initial effect of immigration is small and increases over time as immigrants acquire local labor market skills and compete with native workers we empirically examine these alternative hypotheses using data from israel between 1989 and 1999 we find that wages of both men and women are negatively correlated with the fraction of immigrants with little local experience in a labor market segment a 10 percent increase in the share of immigrants lowers natives wages in the short run by 1 3 percent but this effect dissolves after 4 7 years this result is robust to a variety of different segmentations of the labor market to the inclusion of cohort effects and to different dynamic structures in the residual term of the wage equation on the other hand we do not find any effect of immigration on employment neither in the short nor in the medium run

mass migration to israel and natives employment transitions this study examines how mass migration from the former soviet union to israel affected natives probability of moving from employment to non employment and vice versa using 1989 99 data from the israeli labor force survey the authors find that the share of immigrants in labor market cells defined by occupation industry district of residence schooling and experience was generally positively associated with natives probability of moving from employment to non employment however when the analysis controls for the endogenous sorting of immigrants across cells this effect is substantially reduced for men and disappears or is even reversed for women the authors conclude that immigrants tended to cluster in labor market cells with high turnover rates and that immigration did not increase natives likelihood of exiting employment they also find no discernible effects of immigration on natives transitions between labor market cells or on the probability of their moving from non employment to employment

immigration and wages evidence from construction to identify relative wage impacts of immigration we make use of certification and licensing requirements in the norwegian construction sector that give rise to exogenous variation in immigrant employment shares across trades individual panel data reveal substantially lower wage growth for workers in trades with rising immigrant employment than for other workers selective attrition from the sector masks the causal wage impact unless accounted for by individual fixed effects for low and semi skilled workers effects of new immigration are comparable for natives and older immigrant cohorts consistent with perfect substitutability between native and immigrant labor within trade finally we present evidence that immigration reduces price inflation as price increases over the sample period were significantly lower in activities with growth in the immigrant share than in activities with no or small change in immigrant employment

migration and imperfect labor markets theory and cross country evidence from denmark germany and the uk we investigate the labor market effects of immigration in denmark germany and the uk three countries which are characterized by considerable differences in labor market institutions and welfare states institutions such as collective bargaining minimum wages employment protection and unemployment benefits affect the way in which wages respond to labor supply shocks and hence the labor market effects of immigration we employ a wage setting approach which assumes that wages decline with the unemployment rate albeit imperfectly we find that the wage and employment effects of immigration depend on wage flexibility and the composition of the labor supply shock in germany immigration involves only moderate wage but large unemployment effects since immigrants are concentrated in labor market segments with low wage flexibility the reverse is true for the uk and denmark

the craft of labormetrics using a wide array of examples from the literature and from original estimates the author examines the pitfalls that make good empirical research in labor economics at least as much craft as statistical technique among the subjects discussed are the appropriateness and cleanliness of data problems of extreme observations the validity of attempts to produce exogeneity using instrumental variables natural experiments and structural models and the treatment of selectivity and unobservable individual effects the author stresses the importance of testing empirical results to ensure that they make sense and of presenting them clearly and economically

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

the impact of 1970s repatriates from africa on the portuguese labor market this paper examines the labor market effect of the retornados who immigrated to portugal from angola and mozambique in the mid 1970s following portugal s loss of its african colonies the retornados increased the portuguese labor force by roughly 10 in just three years two analyses suggest contrasting conclusions first comparisons of portugal with spain and france indicate that any adverse effect of the retornados was quantitatively swamped by the europe wide downturn in labor market conditions in the 1970s second comparisons between districts within portugal indicate that the retornados may have had a strong adverse effect on portuguese wages suggesting that immigration may be considerably more harmful than previous case studies have concluded the authors however regard the results of the within portugal analysis as less reliable than those of the comparison across countries

the labour market impact of immigration in the first part of this paper we present a stylized model of the labour market impact of immigra tion we then discuss mechanisms through which an economy can adjust to immigration changes in factor prices output mix and production technology in the second part we explain the problems of empirically estimating how immigration affects labour market outcomes of the resident population and review some strategies to address these we then summarize some recent empirical studies for the uk and other countries we conclude with an outlook on what we believe are important avenues for future research