A New Look at the Impact of Migration on the Wage Differential

Hsiao-Chuan Chang

No 827, Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne

Abstract: The impact of migrants on the host country's wages has been an important issue for policy makers and has attracted much research attention. Since no consistent conclusion has been reached regarding this impact, the debate over immigration policy continues in many countries. This paper constructs a theoretical dynamic general equilibrium model by which the transitional and long-run effects of a migration shock on endogenous variables, including the wage differential, can be illuminated. Consistent results from different scenarios are obtained: first, the wage differential is boosted by permanent migrants in both the short and long run; second, if migrants stay temporarily, the wage differential increases in the short run and the effect dies out in the long run; third, unskilled migrants have a smaller effect on the wage differential while engaging in unskilled-labour intensive production than in skilled-labour intensive production; fourth permanent migrants impel domestic workers to upgrade skills by demanding an increased amount of education.

JEL-codes: C61 C68 D10 D91 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/wpapers-00-01/827.pdf (text/html)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/wpapers-00-01/827.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> http://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/economics/downloads/wpapers-00-01/827.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/economics/downloads/wpapers-00-01/827.pdf)

Related works:
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:mlb:wpaper:827

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 4th Floor, FBE Building, Level 4, 111 Barry Street. Victoria, 3010, Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dandapani Lokanathan ().