International Migration: A Cross-Country Analysis

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This section identifies and organizes recent empirical research that examines economic growth’s relationship with immigration, human capital, industry and development of technology. In theory, economic growth and development are different concepts. Growth and development often occur simultaneously, however, in the long run, growth and development may indicate different goals: growth emphasis efficiency at the moment, while development emphasizes sustainable and progressive change. Growth means more output (sometimes more input or higher efficiency), while development implies both increase in output and changes in the technical and institutional arrangements by which it is produced (Kindleberger 1958).
As Shaffer et al stated, although the two …show more content…

He found positive association between a country’s development level and both measures of migration – the remittances’ share of GDP and foreign-born population share. In his research, migration was assumed to be exogenous. Park and Hewings (2009) examined immigration’s impact on regional and national GDP using a simulation model. Their results showed that immigration’s negative effects on wage and capital/labor ratio and positive effects on national and regional GDP will diminish over time. This study shed light on the time frame of the examination of immigration’s economic impact and indicated that immigration’s negative and positive impacts may both be limited to a certain period of time and is closely related to the demographic structure of immigration. Peri (2013) pointed out that immigration’s effect on productivity has been overlooked in earlier analyses. Together with many other scholars, Peri conducted a series of studies examining the relationships between immigration and productivity in the United States. Peri suggested that immigration’s productivity effects mainly come from stimulation to investment and innovation, as well as from promoting specialization and increasing efficiency. In the medium to long run, this productivity increase drove wage growth. He also admitted the difficulty of identifying the productivity effect of immigration and that is probably the reason why it has largely been neglected. Peri (2012a) examined immigration’s impact on the TFP in the United States at the state level. Peri found that immigrants promote specialization and therefore increase total factor productivity. This impact, however, was offset by immigration’s negative impact on the skill-bias of production technologies, leading to a slightly negative effect on average workers’