Skilled Migration and Economic Performances: evidence from OECD countries

This paper investigates the effects of immigration flows and their skill content on per capita GDP in 24 OECD host countries. Theoretical models concludes that the effect of immigrants in host country's income depends on the capital content of migrants (Benhabib 1996); empirically the question is still open and this paper contributes to make light on this. So we propose an empirical estimation on the effects of immigrants and their skill level on per capita GDP. Using a IV model to solve the endogeneity problem we found that high skilled migration has a positive effect on per capita GDP, but it is not enough to fully compensate the overall negative effects of migration on per capita GDP.