Immigration and Structural Change: Evidence from Post-War Germany

Sebastian Braun and Michael Kvasnicka

No 6690, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Does immigration accelerate sectoral change towards high-productivity sectors? This paper uses the mass displacement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II as a natural experiment to study this question. A simple two-sector model of the economy, in which moving costs prevent the marginal product of labor to be equalized across sectors, predicts that immigration boosts output per worker by expanding the high-productivity sector, but decreases output per worker within a sector. Using German district-level data from before and after the war, we find strong empirical support for these predictions.

Keywords: sectoral change; immigration; post-war Germany; output growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 J21 J61 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-lab and nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of International Economics, 2014, 93 (2), 253-269

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https://docs.iza.org/dp6690.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Immigration and structural change: Evidence from post-war Germany (2014)
Working Paper: Immigration and Structural Change: Evidence from Post-War Germany (2013)
Working Paper: Immigration and structural change: Evidence from post-war Germany (2012)
Working Paper: Immigration and Structural Change – Evidence from Post-war Germany (2012)
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