Do immigrants take or create residents' jobs?

Christoph Basten and Michael Siegenthaler

No 13-335, KOF Working papers from KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich

Abstract: We estimate the causal effect of immigration on the labor market outcomes of resident employees in Switzerland, whose foreign labor force has increased by 32.8% in the last decade. To address endogeneity of immigration into different labor market cells, we develop new variants of the shift-share instrument, tailored for small-open economies, that exploit only that part in the variation of immigration which can be explained by migration push-factors in the source countries. We find that immigration has reduced unemployment of residents and has enabled them to fill more demanding jobs, while it had no adverse effect on wages and employment.

Keywords: Immigration; Native employment; Labor shortage; Shift-share instrument; KOF-Key-immigration; KOF-Key-arbeitsmarkt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kof:wpskof:13-335

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