This lecture will give an overview of the research on measuring the economic impact of immigration. The discussion will cover the evolution of the literature in labor economics, beginning with the estimation of “spatial correlations” that compare labor market outcomes across cities, and the “natural experiments” approach pioneered by Card’s (1990) study of the impact of the Mariel boatlift.
The lecture will continue with a discussion of the national-level (skill-cell) approach developed in Borjas (2003), as well as the very recent (and on-going) debate over the Mariel evidence. The lecture will also examine how the distributional wage impact is closely linked to the economic model used to estimate the aggregate gains from immigration to the receiving country, as well as the global gains from open borders.
About the speaker:
George J. Borjas is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2011. Professor Borjas is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Research Fellow at IZA. Professor Borjas is the author of several books, including Immigration Economics (Harvard University Press, 2014), Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy (Princeton University Press, 1999), and the widely used textbook Labor Economics (McGraw-Hill, 2016), now in its seventh edition. His latest book is We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative, published by W. W. Norton in Fall 2016. He has also published over 150 articles in books and scholarly journals. His professional honors include citations in Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in America. Professor Borjas was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1998 and a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists in 2004. In 2016, Politico listed Professor Borjas #17 in the list of the 50 « thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics…For telling it like it really is on immigration. » He received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University in 1975.
About the event:
The lecture is organised by the Centre for Research in Economics and Management (CREA) with the Doctoral School in Economics and Finance as part of the FNR-funded Doctoral Training Unit on Migration, Inequalities and Labour Markets (DTU MINLAB).
Register by email to: roswitha.glorieux@uni.lu