The Economic Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market of Host Countries - Meta-Analytic Evidence

The number of immigrants across the world has doubled since 1980. The estimates of the impact of immigration on wages and employment in host countries are quantitatively small but vary widely. We use meta-regression analysis to show how the estimates vary with definitions of the labor market, the extent of substitutability of foreign and native workers, and controls for endogeneity of immigrant settlement. On average, the impact on employment of the native born is smaller than on wages, and impacts are generally smaller in the U.S. than in other countries studied to date. From the policy perspective, attention must now focus on distributional and long-run productivity effects.