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The Trade Creation Effect of Immigrants: Evidence from the Remarkable Case of Spain

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  • Giovanni Peri
  • Francisco Requena

Abstract

There is abundant evidence that immigrant networks are associated with larger exports from the country where they settle to their countries of origin. The direction of causality of this association is less clearly established. Also, we do not know to what extent these increased exports are due to an increase in the number of exporting firms (i.e. the extensive margin of trade) or due to larger values exported by existing firm (i.e. the intensive margin). Using micro data on individual trade transactions from Spanish provinces between 1995 and 2008 and data on the stock of immigrants in those provinces by country of origin we can make progress on both fronts. The richness of our data allows us to control for a large set of fixed effects and to use an instrumental variable strategy to isolate the export creation effect of new immigrants. We are also able to quantify the impact of immigrants on the intensive and extensive margin of trade and how it varies between homogeneous, moderately differentiated and differentiated goods. Our findings can be interpreted, in the light of the Chaney (2008) gravity model, as consistent with the idea that immigrants reduce the fixed costs of trade. As implied by a decrease in fixed trade costs in that model we find that immigrants significantly increase exports (elasticity of 0.10), that the effect is almost entirely due to an increase in the extensive margin and that the effect is somewhat stronger for differentiated goods.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 15625.

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Date of creation: Dec 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15625

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References

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  1. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2007. "Firms in International Trade," NBER Working Papers 13054, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. José V. Blanes & Joan A. Martín-Montaner, 2006. "Migration Flows and Intra-Industry Trade Adjustments," Working Papers 06.04, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
  3. James A. Dunlevy, 2006. "The Influence of Corruption and Language on the Protrade Effect of Immigrants: Evidence from the American States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(1), pages 182-186, February.
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Cited by:
  1. Massimiliano Bratti & Luca de Benedictis & Gianluca Santoni, 2012. "On the Pro-Trade Effects of Immigrants," Development Working Papers 347, Centro Studi Luca d\'Agliano, University of Milano, revised 13 Nov 2012.
  2. Murat Genc & Masood Gheasi & Peter Nijkamp & Jacques Poot, 2011. "The impact of immigration on international trade: a meta-analysis," Norface Discussion Paper Series 2011020, Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London.
  3. Mariya Aleksynska & Giovanni Peri, 2011. "Isolating the Network Effect of Immigrants on Trade," Working Papers 2011-26, CEPII research center.
  4. Guadalupe Serrano-Domingo & Francisco Requena-Silvente, 2013. "Examining the non-linear relationship between migration and trade," Working Papers 1310, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
  5. Matteo Gomellini & Cormac O' Grada, 2011. "Outward and Inward Migrations in Italy: A Historical Perspective," Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) 08, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  6. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Grossmann, Volker & Kohler, Wilhelm, 2012. "Migration, International Trade and Capital Formation: Cause or Effect?," IZA Discussion Papers 6975, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  7. Francisco Requena & Vicente Pallardó & Andrés Artal, 2012. "Which immigrants stimulate exports in their host country? (en homenaje a José Vicente Blanes)," Working Papers 1207, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
  8. Christopher Parsons, . "Do Migrants Really Foster Trade? The Trade-Migration Nexus, a Panel Approach 1960-2000," Discussion Papers 11/10, University of Nottingham, GEP.
  9. Trax, Michaela & Brunow, Stephan & Suedekum, Jens, 2012. "Cultural Diversity and Plant‐Level Productivity," IZA Discussion Papers 6845, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  10. Gabriele Morettini & Andrea F. Presbitero & Massimo Tamberi, 2012. "Determinants of international migrations to Italian provinces," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1604-1617.
  11. Dieter Pennerstorfer, 2011. "Export, Migration, and Costs of Market Entry: Evidence from Central European Firms," WIFO Working Papers 405, WIFO.
  12. Michael Good, 2012. "How Localized is the Pro-trade Effect of Immigration? Evidence from Mexico and the United States," Working Papers 1203, Florida International University, Department of Economics.
  13. Hélène Ehrhart & Maëlan Le Goff & Emmanuel Rocher & Raju Jan Singh, 2012. "Does Migration Foster Exports? An African Perspective," Working Papers 2012-38, CEPII research center.
  14. Faqin Lin, 2011. "The pro-trade impacts of immigrants: a meta-analysis of network effects," Journal of Chinese Economic and Foreign Trade Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 4(1), pages 17-27, February.

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