Skilled Migration and Economic Performances: Evidence from OECD Countries

This paper investigates the effects of immigration flows and their human capital content on per capita GDP variation in 24 OECD host countries. Theoretical models concludes that the effect of immigrants in host country's income depends on the human 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 human capital content on per capita GDP variation. Using a IV model to solve the endogeneity problem we found that high human capital content by immigrants has a positive effect on per capita GDP variation, but it is not enough to fully compensate the overall negative effects of migration on changes in per capita output.