Immigration and Manufacturing In Italy.Evidence from the 2000s

This tests the effect of an increase in the migration presence (over population) on manufacturing firms' performance at the local level. The model is estimated for the Ital- ian economy during the recent years of rapid and varied migration (a threefold increase in the 1995-2006 and the presence of 189 nationalities). Firm's performance is mea- sured with common indexes (sales per worker, production per worker and value added per worker) by aggregating individual firm data at different levels. In particular, we construct measures for both a representative (average) province-sector firm and a representative (average) province firm. By means of the sector data we are able to estimate the impact of migrants on high- and low-skill sectors, both in the level and in relative terms. We also consider two dimensions of migrants heterogeneity (in terms of characteristics of nationalities) in order to approximate the effect of high- and low-skill migrants. Our results show that migrants' presence in the province positively affects firm's performance: a doubling of the migration ratio to provincial population raises by about 10 per cent sales per worker and production per worker on average. However, this increase is unevenly distributed and favors low-skill versus high-skill sectors: sectors like Food and Beverages and Furniture show an increase between 13% and 15% when the migration rate doubles. Moreover, on the labor supply side, an increase in proxied relatively low-skill migrants favors low-skill sectors.