Migrant Networks and Trade: The Vietnamese Boat People as a Natural Experiment

Christopher Parsons and Pierre-Louis Vézina

No 16-04, Economics Discussion / Working Papers from The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics

Abstract: We provide cogent evidence for the causal pro-trade effect of migrants and in doing so establish an important link between migrant networks and long-run economic development. To this end, we exploit a unique event in human history, i.e. the exodus of the Vietnamese Boat People to the US. This episode represents an ideal natural experiment as the large immigration shock, the first wave of which comprised refugees exogenously allocated across the US, occurred over a twenty-year period, during which time the US imposed a complete trade embargo on Vietnam. Following the lifting of trade restrictions in 1994, US exports to Vietnam grew most in US States with larger Vietnamese populations, themselves the result of larger refugee inflows 20 years earlier.

Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int, nep-mig and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ecompapers.biz.uwa.edu.au/paper/PDF%20of%2 ... ral%20Experiment.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Migrant Networks and Trade: The Vietnamese Boat People as a Natural Experiment (2018)
Working Paper: Migrant Networks and Trade: The Vietnamese Boat People as a Natural Experiment (2016)
Working Paper: Migrant Networks and Trade: The Vietnamese Boat People as a Natural Experiment (2014)
Working Paper: Migrant Networks and Trade: The Vietnamese Boat People as a Natural Experiment (2014)
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:uwa:wpaper:16-04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion / Working Papers from The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sam Tang ().