How Immigration Grease Is Affected by Economic, Institutional, and Policy Contexts: Evidence from EU Labor Markets
利用欧盟劳动力调查和收入数据，研究移民与本土工人对技能短缺的反应差异，发现移民在低GDP、高移民流入和开放政策的国家更灵活，但高福利支出会削弱这种灵活性。
Summary Theoretical arguments and previous country‐level evidence indicate that immigrants are more fluid than natives in responding to changing skill shortages across countries, occupation groups and industries. The diversity across EU member states enables us to test this hypothesis across various institutional, economic and policy contexts. Drawing on the EU LFS and EU SILC datasets, we study the relationship between residual wage premia as a measure of skill shortages in different occupation‐industry‐country cells and the shares of immigrants and natives working in these cells. We find that immigrants’ responsiveness to skill shortages exceeds that of natives in the EU15, in particular in member states with low GDP, higher levels of immigration from outside EU, and more open immigration and integration policies; but also those with barriers to citizenship acquisition or family reunification. While higher welfare spending seems to exert a lock‐in effect, a comparison across different types of welfare states indicates that institutional complementarities alleviate such effect.