Real Exchange Rates and the Earnings of Immigrants
利用德国行政数据和2004年欧盟东扩，研究发现当德国收入在母国购买力更强时，移民接受更低起薪，但随后通过转向高薪职业和企业追赶上来，美国数据也呈现类似模式。
Abstract We relate origin-destination real price differences to immigrants’ reservation wages and their career trajectories, exploiting administrative data from Germany and the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. We find that immigrants who enter Germany when a unit of earnings from Germany allows for larger consumption at home settle for lower entry wages, but subsequently catch up to those arriving with less favourable exchange rates, through transition to better-paying occupations and firms. Similar patterns hold in the United States data. Our analysis offers one explanation for the widespread phenomenon of immigrants’ downgrading, with new implications for immigrant cohort effects and assimilation profiles.