Based on the current European discussion about immigration policy, this paper gives an overview of central economic consequences of immigration for a host country's labor market. The most important theoretical arguments are presented and evaluated against the available empirical evidence. The...

Economic theory suggests that selective immigration policies based on observable characteristics will affect unobservable migrant quality. Little empirical evidence exists on this hypothesis. We quantify traditionally unobservable components of migrant quality in Australia, a high-migrant share...

This paper estimates the effects of immigration on wages of native workers at the national U.S. level. Following Borjas (2003) we focus on national labor markets for workers of different skills and we enrich his methodology and refine previous estimates. We emphasize that a production function...

The effect of immigration on host and origin countries is mediated by the way migrants take their labor supply decisions. We propose a simple way of integrating the traditional random utility maximization model used to analyze location decisions with a classical labor demand function at...

A pervasive, yet little acknowledged feature of international migration to developed countries is that newly arriving immigrants are increasingly highly skilled since the 1980s. This paper analyses the determinants of changes in the skill composition of immigrants using a framework suggested by...

A pervasive, yet little acknowledged feature of international migration to developed countries is that newly arriving immigrants are increasingly highly skilled since the 1980s. This paper analyses the determinants of changes in the skill composition of immigrants using a framework suggested by...

Switzerland has experienced a substantial influx of immigrants over the last 50 years after World War II, which has led Switzerland to have among the highest share of foreigners in population among all OECD countries. This paper analyses the migration experience of Switzerland. The analysis...

This paper is concerned with the determinants and consequences of intercontinental migration over the past four centuries. It begins with a review of the history of primarily trans-Atlantic migration to the New World during the period of Colonial settlement. The contract and coerced migration...

In the 1980s the composition of immigrants to the U.S. shifted towards less-skilled workers. Around this time, real wages and employment of younger and less-educated U.S. workers fell. Some blame recent immigration shifts for the misfortunes of unskilled workers in the U.S. OLS estimates using...

The paper analyzes the ability of a regional labor market to absorb growing flows of immigrant workers with declining levels of skills during relatively high unemployment. The impact of the size of the flow and the skill characteristics of the immigrants are analyzed. It is found that...