Citation

Discussion Paper Details

Please find the details for DP763 in an easy to copy and paste format below:

Full Details   |   Bibliographic Reference

Full Details

Title: The Earnings Dynamics of Immigrant Labour

Author(s): Christoph M Schmidt

Publication Date: January 1993

Keyword(s): Earnings Dynamics, Human Capital, Implicit Contracts and Migration

Programme Area(s): Human Resources

Abstract: Empirical evidence on the labour market performance of immigrants shows that migrant workers suffer from an initial earnings disadvantage compared to observationally equivalent native workers, but that their subsequent earnings tend to increase faster than native earnings. Economists usually try to explain this phenomenon by spot markets for labour and increases in human capital. In contrast, this paper proposes a contract theoretic model as an alternative to productivity related arguments. It is argued here that the possible distinction of migrants according to their return propensities provides a natural experiment for tests for the underlying process. A test with German data weakly supports the contract model. The ideas presented here have important implications for the emerging group of new immigration countries, most prominently for those in Western Europe.

For full details and related downloads, please visit: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=763

Bibliographic Reference

Schmidt, C. 1993. 'The Earnings Dynamics of Immigrant Labour'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=763