Immigrants, Imports, and Welfare: Evidence from Household Purchase Data

Brett McCully, Torsten Jaccard () and Christoph Albert
Additional contact information
Torsten Jaccard: Vancouver School of Economics

No 2417, RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM)

Abstract: Do immigrants make goods from their origin country more accessible to their non-immigrant neighbors? We augment U.S. grocery scanner data to include the origin country of both households and products, thereby enabling the first direct estimate of how local immigrant presence affects import penetration. Using a quantitative model of trade, we show that immigrants increase the grocery import expenditure share by 8%. Three quarters of this effect is attributable to immigrants’ own disproportionate preferences for imported goods. Immigrants therefore raise import expenditures primarily through their own consumption, with muted benefits for their non-immigrant neighbors. The benefits that do accrue to natives are concentrated within high-income and urban households.

Keywords: Import demand; immigrant preferences; household heterogeneity; spillovereffects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J31 J61 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/24017.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:crm:wpaper:2417

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CReAM Administrator () and Matthew Nibloe ().