Immigrant's Characteristics and its different effects on bilateral trade

Jose Blanes

No 05-09, Working Papers on International Economics and Finance from FEDEA

Abstract: This paper tests for the impact of immigration on bilateral trade using Spanish data from 1995 to 2003. It also explores some possible mechanisms through which the stock of immigrants in a country can contribute to its trade. It uses a gravity equation for trade augmented with an immigrants stock variable and a set of control variables. The immigrants variable enters the estimated equation in different ways depending on immigrant relevant characteristics. Results show that there is a positive link between immigration and both exports and imports. We find evidence for the trade transaction cost channel but not for the preference one. We find evidence that support that the mechanisms behind this link are the information effect - additional information about product and about social and political institutions brought by immigrants - and the social o ethnic network effect - since immigrants with a medium level of education and those who are related to business activities are the one who have a positive effect on bilateral trade.

References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://documentos.fedea.net/pubs/defi/2005/defi05-09.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Immigrant’s Characteristics and its different effects on bilateral trade (2005)
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:fda:fdadef:05-09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers on International Economics and Finance from FEDEA
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carmen Arias ().