DP2047 Portuguese Migrants in the German Labour Market: Performance and Self-Selection
Author(s): | Thomas Bauer, Pedro Telhado Pereira, Michael Vogler, Klaus F Zimmermann |
Publication Date: | December 1998 |
Keyword(s): | labour market performance of migrants, Migration Policy, Portuguese Migration, self-selection of migrants |
JEL(s): | F22, J61 |
Programme Areas: | Labour Economics |
Link to this Page: | cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=2047 |
Using a large new data set, we analyse the labour market performance of Portuguese workers in Germany. While previous work compares wages and characteristics of migrants only to those of natives, we match the data also with an equivalent survey from the sending country. We find that Portuguese migrants as a whole are negatively selected with the exception of blue-collar workers that are the greatest group among them. The observation that Portuguese migrants earn more than comparable Germans indicates that they have higher unobservable skills. Our results confirm the effectiveness of the German guest worker system.