Immigration and Emigration: Wages Gained and Lost

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Immigration is a highly charged issue in many developed countries. A leading thesis is that immigrants depress the wages of native workers, especially the low skilled. In a paper titled "The Wage Effects of Immigration and Emigration" (Working Paper 16646, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2010), Frederic Docquier, Caglar Ozden, and Giovanni Peri not only rebut this notion, but also find that emigration, a little-studied phenomenon in developed countries, has exactly the effect wrongly attributed to immigration.

Using an aggregate production model well known in the literature, the authors simulate the wage effects of both immigration and emigration, apart from other changes in the economy, to assess the impact of global labor movements during 1990-2000 on the wages of those who do not migrate. The chief focus is on …