THE EFFECTS OF LABOR MARKET COMPETITION WITH IMMIGRANTS ON THE WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT OF NATIVES

STEVEN RAPHAEL; LUCAS RONCONI

Du Bois Review

Cambridge University Press

Año: 2007 vol. 4 p. 413 - 432

1742-058X

This paper provides an overview of the current debate among economists pertaining to the effects of recent immigration on the earnings and employment of native-born workers. Since much of this debate revolves around methodological differences in research design, we devote much of our effort to discussing the various strategies that researchers have used to isolate immigrant competition effects, and attempt to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy. Our overall assessment is that the central tendency of the research evidence suggests that recent immigration has had only a modest effect on the labor market prospects of native-born Americans. Some potential hypotheses that may explain this lack of a large impact are capital accumulation and the imperfect substitutability between natives and immigrants.