Immigration and Native Welfare

Abstract

This article unifies two approaches for identifying the welfare and wage effects of immigration, one emphasizing the immigration surplus, the other stressing a potential welfare loss due to a terms-of-trade effect. We decompose the native welfare effect into a standard complementarity effect, augmented by a Stolper-Samuelson effect, and a terms-of-trade effect. We illustrate the welfare and wage effects of endogenous goods prices in a stylized-specific factors model. Finally, we calibrate this model to a generic OECD economy and provide simulation results. The key insight is that endogenous goods prices play a quantitatively important role, sometimes even overturning received results.