The revival of international migration in the last fifteen years has spurred economists to more systematically study their determinants and consequences. This contribution expands the existing literature in two directions. First we focus on the European Union as a whole and compare it to the US and other countries with net immigration (Canada, Australia and Switzerland). In so doing we establish some important facts about their capacity to attract migrant, and to foster internal migration across countries. Second, we analyze more systematically the causes and consequences of international migration of workers with different educational levels. We use a recent data set based on census information on natives and foreign born in 28 OECD countries for the year 2000. Four important facts emerge: 1) The European Union, far from acting like an integrated labor market (such as the US), exhibits low levels of cross-country internal mobility (for all skill levels) even compared to other OECD countries. 2) The European Union lags far behind the US and other immigration countries (Canada, Australia, Switzerland) in its ability to attract immigrants from outside (for all skills levels). 3) While typical immigration economies attract international migrants whose schooling achievements are complementary to those of natives, thus increasing wages for a majority of their natives, the EU attracts immigrants whose education levels mirror those of its natives and may depress wage for a majority of them. 4) Within the EU, Great Britain is the most similar to the immigration economies in terms of its ability to attract skilled migrants and in the composition of immigrants across schooling groups.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of California at Davis, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
06-36.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: