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Skilled migration and economic performances: Evidence from OECD countries

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics volume 146, pages 781–820 (2010)Cite this article

Summary

This paper investigates the effects of immigration flows and their human capital content on per capita GDP variation in 24 OECD host countries. Theoretical models concludes that the effect of immigrants in host country’s income depends on the human capital content of migrants (Benhabib, 1996); empirically the question is still open and this paper contributes to make light on this. So we propose an empirical estimation on the effects of immigrants and their human capital content on per capita GDP variation. Using a IV model to solve the endogeneity problem we found that high human capital content by immigrants has a positive effect on per capita GDP variation, but it is not enough to fully compensate the overall negative effects of migration on changes in per capita output.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. department of Economics, Business and Statistics, University of Milan, via Conservatorio 7, 20122, Milano, Italy

    Gianluca Orefice

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  1. Gianluca Orefice
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Correspondence to Gianluca Orefice.

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I would like to thank G. Barba Navaretti, F. Docquier, T. Frattini, G. Peri, W. Pariente and V. Verardi for helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank participants at the Second Italian Doctoral Workshop in Economics and Policy Analysis (Turin 2–3 July 2009) and participants at the SSES annual meeting, Univeristy of Fribourg 24–25 June 2010. All errors are mine.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Orefice, G. Skilled migration and economic performances: Evidence from OECD countries. Swiss J Economics Statistics 146, 781–820 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399337

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