Low and Highly Skilled Labor Immigration and Wage Inequality

Abstract

Fears of rising income inequalities loom large in recent discussions of how globalization and in particular migration are affecting economies and societies [1]. This paper addresses the question how labor immigration is related to wage inequality by using a specific-factors trade model. We show that the impact of immigration of low or highly skilled labor on wage inequality depends mainly on the capital intensity of the industry in which labor immigrates.

Share and Cite:

B. Wojtyniak, U. Broll and S. Marjit, "Low and Highly Skilled Labor Immigration and Wage Inequality," Technology and Investment, Vol. 1 No. 2, 2010, pp. 97-100. doi: 10.4236/ti.2010.12011.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1] OECD, “Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries,” Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, 2008a.
[2] United Nations, International Migration, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Wall Chart, New York. 2006.
[3] OECD, “The Global Competition for Talent, Mobility of the Highly Skilled,” Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, 2008b.
[4] World Bank, “Reshaping Economic Geography,” The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2009.
[5] International Organization for Migration (IOM), “World Migration 2008: Managing Labour Mobility in the Evolving Global Economy,” Geneva, 2008.
[6] World Bank, “International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain,” The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2005.
[7] A. Kemnitz, “Can Immigrant Employment Alleviate the Demographic Burden? The Role of Union Centralization,” Economics Letters, Vol. 99, No. 1,2005, pp. 123-126.
[8] International Labour Organization (ILO), “World of Work Report 2008: Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization,” Geneva, 2008.
[9] S. Yabuuchi and S. Chaudhuri, “International Migration of Labour and Skilled-Unskilled Wage Inequality in a Developing Economy,” Economic Modelling, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2007, pp. 128-137.
[10] S. Marjit, U. Broll and S. Sengupta, “Trade and Wage-Gap in Poor Countries: The Role of the Informal Sector,” In: A. Bose, Ed., Macroeconomics, Trade and Institutions, Essays in honour of M. K. Rakshit, Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 2000.
[11] S. Marjit and R. Acharyya, “International Trade, Wage Inequality and the Developing Economy,” Physica, Heidelberg, 2001.
[12] S. Marjit, H. Beladi and A. Chakrabarti, “Trade and Wage Inequality in Developing Countries,” Economic Inquiry, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2004, pp. 295-303.
[13] S. Marjit and S. Kar, “Emigration and Wage Inequality,” Economics Letters, Vol. 88, No. 1, 2005, pp. 141-145.
[14] H. Johannsson and S. Weiler, “Immigration and Wage Inequality in the 1990s: Panel Evidence from the Current Population Survey,” Social Science Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2005, pp. 231-240.
[15] R. W. Jones, “A Three-Factor Model in Theory, Trade, and History,” In: J. N. Bhagwati, Ed., Trade, Balance of Payments, and Growth, Chapter 1, North-Holland, Ams- terdam, 1971.
[16] J. Meckl and S. Zink, “Human-Capital Investment and the Wage Gap,” Economic Theory, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2002, pp. 853-859.
[17] J. N. Bhagwati, A. Panagariya and T. N. Srinivasan, “Lectures in International Trade,” 2nd Edition, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998.

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.