Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2018

Abstract

Flows of US immigrants are concentrated at the extremes of the skill distribution. We develop a dynamic political economy model consistent with this observation. Individuals care about wages and the welfare of their children. Skill types are complementary in production. Voter support for immigration requires that the children of median-voter natives and of immigrants have sufficiently dissimilar skills. We estimate intergenerational transition matrices for skills, as measured by education, and find support for immigration at high and low skills, but not in the middle. In a version with guest worker programs, voters prefer high-skilled immigrants but low-skilled guest workers.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jedc.2018.07.005

Publication Title

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jedc.2018.07.005

Included in

Finance Commons

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