Immigration, Search and Redistribution: A Quantitative Assessment of Native Welfare

Michele Battisti (michele.battisti@gla.ac.uk), Gabriel Felbermayr, Giovanni Peri and Panu Poutvaara

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2018, vol. 16, issue 4, 1137-1188

Abstract: What are the welfare effects of immigration on low-skilled and high-skilled natives? To address this question, we develop a general equilibrium model featuring two skill types, search frictions, wage bargaining, and a welfare state that redistributes income through unemployment benefits and the provision of public goods. Our quantitative analysis suggests that, in all 20 countries studied, immigration attenuates the effects of search frictions. The resulting gains tend to outweigh the welfare costs of redistribution. Immigration has increased native welfare in almost all countries. In two-thirds of countries, both high- and low-skilled natives have benefited from the presence of immigrants, contrary to what models without search frictions or redistribution predict. Average total welfare gains from migration are 1.25% and 1.00% for high- and low-skilled natives, respectively.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (76)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvx035 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Immigration, Search, and Redistribution: A Quantitative Assessment of Native Welfare (2014)
Working Paper: Immigration, Search, and Redistribution: A Quantitative Assessment of Native Welfare (2014)
Working Paper: Immigration, Search, and Redistribution: A Quantitative Assessment of Native Welfare (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:oup:jeurec:v:16:y:2018:i:4:p:1137-1188.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Romain Wacziarg

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press (joanna.bergh@oup.com).