Immigration and Trade Creation for the U.S.: The Role of Immigrant Occupation

Kusum Mundra ()

No 7073, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper highlights that the immigrants' effect on trade is not identical across all types of immigrants but it varies with the immigrants' occupation. Using a sample of 63 U.S. trading partners which are also big immigrant sending countries over the years 1991-2000, this paper finds that the immigrant trade elasticity for the no occupation group is similar in magnitude to the immigrant effect on trade estimated in the literature. However, this does not capture the full extent of the effect of immigrant network on trade. The share of professional immigrants in comparison to immigrants with no occupation significantly increases the trade elasticity for Rauch's referenced price and differentiated commodities and this effect is strongest for the differentiated goods. This paper establishes that immigrants' occupation is an important indicator of the quality and effectiveness of immigrants' network in trade creation with the home country.

Keywords: bilateral trade; immigrant networks; immigrant occupation; U.S. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F11 F22 J10 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published - published in: International Trade Journal, 28 (4), 2014, 311-343.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7073.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7073

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().