Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages

Giovanni Peri and Chad Sparber

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2009, vol. 1, issue 3, 135-69

Abstract: Large inflows of less educated immigrants may reduce wages paid to comparably-educated, native-born workers. However, if less educated foreign- and native-born workers specialize in different production tasks, because of different abilities, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. Using occupational task-intensity data from the O*NET dataset and individual US census data, we demonstrate that foreign-born workers specialize in occupations intensive in manual-physical labor skills while natives pursue jobs more intensive in communication-language tasks. This mechanism can explain why economic analyses find only modest wage consequences of immigration for less educated native-born workers. (JEL J24, J31, J61)

JEL-codes: J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.1.3.135
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (572)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/app.1.3.135 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/data/2008-0057_data.zip (application/zip)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/app/2008-0057_app.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Chapter: Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages (2016)
Working Paper: Task Specialization, Immigration and Wages (2009)
Working Paper: Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages (2008)
Working Paper: Task Specialisation, Immigration and Wages (2008)
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:aea:aejapp:v:1:y:2009:i:3:p:135-69

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().