Heterogeneous Labor Impacts of Migration Across Skill Groups: The Case of Costa Rica

Juan Blyde

No 10540, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: Popular empirical strategies that examine the labor impacts of migrants, like the skill-cell approach, are frequently used to measure the effects of immigrants from a particular skill group on native-born workers with similar skills. I use an augmented version of the skill-cell approach to examine the impacts of immigrants on native workers with similar skills but also across skill groups. I apply this approach to the case of Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica. I find large positive employment and wage effects on high-skilled women arising from low-skilled migrants. These positive effects are derived from both the household channel and the complementary-skills channel. I also find negative but small effects on low-skilled native workers. The results show that immigrants can have complex labor market effects on native workers with own and cross elasticities that can be quite different.

Keywords: Employment; International migration; skill-cell (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J60 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:10540

DOI: 10.18235/0002595

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