Immigration and Structural Change: Evidence from Post-War Germany

Sebastian Braun and Michael Kvasnicka

VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

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 specific factors model, 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 empirical support for these predictions.

JEL-codes: F22 J61 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mig
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/79864/1/VfS_2013_pid_89.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)
Working Paper: Immigration and Structural Change – Evidence from Post-war Germany (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc13:79864

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