Immigration and Structural Change – Evidence from Post-war Germany

Sebastian Braun and Michael Kvasnicka

No 345, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

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: Immigration; sectoral change; output growth; post-war Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 J21 J61 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/61426/1/722250665.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 (2012)
Working Paper: Immigration and structural change: Evidence from post-war Germany (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:345

DOI: 10.4419/86788399

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