Opening the labor market to qualified immigrants: a double-edged sword for native employees

Nicolò Gatti (), Fabrizio Mazzonna, Raphaël Parchet () and Giovanni Pica
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Nicolò Gatti: Istituto di Economia Politica (IdEP), Facoltà di Scienze Economiche, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Svizzera
Raphaël Parchet: Istituto di Economia Politica (IdEP), Facoltà di Scienze Economiche, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Svizzera

IdEP Economic Papers from USI Università della Svizzera italiana

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of opening the labor market to qualified immigrants who hold fully equivalent diplomas as native citizens and share the same mother tongue. Leveraging the 2002 opening of the Swiss labor market to qualified workers from the European Union, we show that the policy led to a large inflow of young immigrants, with highly heterogeneous effects on the wages and employment status of qualified Swiss employees. While incumbent employees experienced a wage gain and a decrease in the likelihood of becom- ing inactive, the opposite happened to young native workers entering the labor market after the policy change.

Keywords: iqualified immigration; worker substitutability; experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-int and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lug:wpidep:2201

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