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How did the Miami labor market absorb the Mariel immigrants?

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Author Info
Ethan Lewis
Abstract

Card's (1990) well-known analysis of the Mariel boatlift concluded that this mass influx of mostly less-skilled Cubans to Miami had little impact on the labor market outcomes of the city's less-skilled workers. This paper evaluates two explanations for this. First, consistent with an open-economy framework, this paper asks whether after the boatlift, Miami increased its production of unskilled-intensive manufactured goods, allowing it to "export" the impact of the boatlift. Second, this paper asks whether Miami adapted to the boatlift by implementing new skill-complementary technologies more slowly than would have otherwise been the case. Using a confidential micro data version of the Annual Surveys of Manufactures, I show that following the boatlift, Miami's relative output of different manufacturing industries trended similarly to other cities with similar pre-boatlift trends in manufacturing mix. The response of industry mix to the boatlift therefore appears to be small. Supporting the second type of adjustment, utilization of Cuban labor by Miami's industries rose proportionately to the supply increase generated by the boatlift. In addition, post-boatlift computer use at work was lower in Miami than in other cities with similar levels of computer-based employment before the event, even among non-Hispanic workers in the same detailed cells defined by industry, occupation, and education. This suggests the boatlift induced Miami's industries to employ more unskilled-intensive production technologies. The results suggest an explanation for why native wages are consistently found to be insensitive to local immigration shocks: markets adapt production technology to local factor supplies.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in its series Working Papers with number 04-3.

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Date of creation: 2004
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:04-3

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Keywords: Immigrants;

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  27. David Card, 1989. "The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market," Working Papers 633, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section.. [Downloadable!]
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  28. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen, 2002. "The Deaths of Manufacturing Plants," NBER Working Papers 9026, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  29. Paul Beaudry & David Green, 1998. "What is Driving US and Canadian Wages: Exogenous Technical Change or Endogenous Choice of Technique?," NBER Working Papers 6853, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  31. Ethan Lewis, 2003. "Local, open economies within the U.S.: how do industries respond to immigration?," Working Papers 04-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
  32. Daron Acemoglu, 1998. "Why Do New Technologies Complement Skills? Directed Technical Change And Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 113(4), pages 1055-1089, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Albert Saiz, 2006. "Immigration and Housing Rents in American Cities," IZA Discussion Papers 2189, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Leah Platt Boustan & Price V. Fishback & Shawn E. Kantor, 2007. "The Effect of Internal Migration on Local Labor Markets: American Cities During the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 13276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Ethan Lewis, 2005. "Immigration, skill mix, and the choice of technique," Working Papers 05-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
  4. Ethan Lewis, 2005. "Immigration, Skill Mix, and the Choice of Technique," Working Papers 05-04, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau. [Downloadable!]
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