Immigration and Wages: Evidence from Construction

Bernt Bratsberg () and Oddbjørn Raaum

No 2011016, Norface Discussion Paper Series from Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London

Abstract: To identify relative wage impacts of immigration, we make use of certification and licensing requirements in the Norwegian construction sector that give rise to exogenous variation in immigrant employment shares across trades. Individual panel data reveal substantially lower wage growth for workers in trades with rising immigrant employment than for other workers. Selective attrition from the sector masks the causal wage impact unless accounted for by individual fixed effects. For low and semi-skilled workers, effects of new immigration are comparable for natives and older immigrant cohorts, consistent with perfect substitutability between native and immigrant labor within trade. Finally, we present evidence that immigration reduces price inflation, as price increases over the sample period were significantly lower in activities with growth in the immigrant share than in activities with no or small change in immigrant employment.

Date: 2011-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.norface-migration.org/publ_uploads/NDP_16_11.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Immigration and Wages: Evidence from Construction (2012)
Working Paper: Immigration and Wages: Evidence from Construction (2010)
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:nor:wpaper:2011016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Norface Discussion Paper Series from Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Norface Migration Administrator () and Thomas Cornelissen ().