Immigrant Networks and Their Implications for Occupational Choice and Wages

Krishna Patel and Francis Vella
Additional contact information
Krishna Patel: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2013, vol. 95, issue 4, 1249-1277

Abstract: Occupational shares of various ethnic groups have grew tremendously in regional U.S. labor markets from 1980 to 2000. Using U.S. Census data, we examine the extent to which this growth is attributed to network effects by studying the relationship between the occupational choice of recently arrived immigrants with those of established immigrants from the same country, We find strong evidence of network effects. First, new arrivals are choosing the same occupations as their compatriots, a decision that is operating at the regional level. Second, individuals who choose the most common occupation of their compatriots enjoy a large and positive earnings effect. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: network effects; immigrants; occupational choice; earnings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J3 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (81)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00327 link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Immigrant Networks and Their Implications for Occupational Choice and Wages (2007)
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:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:4:p:1249-1277

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().